Monitoring of the conservation state of the internal wall surfaces of Room with Golden Vault in the Domus Aurea

This project describes the monitoring campaign, performed in situ with the collaboration of Konica Minolta Sensing Europe, in order to verify the actual conservation state of the internal wall surfaces of the Room with Golden Vault in the Domus Aurea in Rome. Particularly, the main aim of this work was to evaluate the problems caused by aggressive environmental conditions (combination of low air temperature and high relative humidity). During this survey, characterized by the integrated use of two and three-dimensional techniques, the environmental conditions were carefully monitored. Reference sample regions of the vault were acquired by means of the 3D laser scanner Konica Minolta Vivid 9i (optical triangulation-based) that allows capturing morphological details of the stucco decorations with a good resolution. Moreover, each detailed scan was supplied with related high resolution images taken by a digital reflex camera Olympus E-510 rigidly connected to the scanner. In Cultural Heritage monitoring applications it is important to integrate the data acquired with different instruments and techniques. Therefore, by this methodological approach, it has been possible to integrate both two and three dimensional data by the projection of the acquired images on the corresponding digital model. In order to complete the cognitive framework of the vault, systematic measures of spectrophotometry by means of the portable spectrophotometer Minolta 2600d were also carried out. The digital data, collected and elaborated by this monitoring campaign, allowed to create a database of morphological information, high resolution digital images, colorimetric values and reflectance curves that may be used in the future as reference data to periodically monitor the conservation state of the surfaces.