Reconstruction of lost architectural volumes by integration of photogrammetry from archive imagery with 3D models of the status quo

Cultural heritage includes several cases of missing architectural element or entire buildings, due to destruction, replacement or radical changes caused over time by other structures. The investigation of these lost elements aimed at their virtual reconstruction, for both scientific and cultural-leisure applications, is therefore a topic of great interest. To this purpose, methodologies for surveying and photogrammetric processing provide a very powerful tool, extracting descriptive and geometric information, both 2-and 3-D, using diverse archive images. This paper presents the issues related to the use of archive images in photogrammetry, pointing out the need for an integrated approach to operations of virtual reconstruction of lost volumes. This approach provides a multidisciplinary effort, in order to evaluate all iconographic sources, of which images processed by geomatics techniques are a component. The paper also presents the early results of a reconstruction project of the Palazzo di Cosimo de’ Medici, in the Fortezza Vecchia site (Livorno, Italy), heavily damaged by World War II bombings and subsequently razed.