Projects · patrimoine
Bruits de couloir - Pompeii
Bruits de couloir project Theatre corridor, Pompeii (Italy)
Context
Project presented in editorial form. Additional details may be added in the Markdown body.
Observation stakes
Produce very high-precision visual documentation to read, compare and annotate ancient graffiti incised on complex walls.
Mercurio solution
In situ night campaign (15,000 photos in 5 nights), wall RTI acquisition with dedicated system, production of 2-gigapixel RTI orthophotographs and development of a scientific web platform.
Technologies
- RTI
- photogrammetry
- gigapixel orthophotography
- web annotation platform
Delivered outcome
A homogeneous multi-scale corpus, consultable online, that transforms acquisitions into an operational graffiti analysis tool.
Bruits de couloir: five nights of acquisition to document the ancient graffiti of Pompeii.
As part of the Bruits de couloir project, Mercurio Imaging carried out an in situ acquisition campaign in the theatre corridor of Pompeii to produce very high-precision visual documentation for the study of ancient graffiti.
Over 5 nights of acquisition, we captured nearly 15,000 photographs under shooting conditions specifically designed to highlight the finest incisions on the walls. This campaign covered all preserved zones of the corridor and constituted a homogeneous image base, usable both for scientific analysis and online data publication.
One of the project’s major challenges was to produce not only photographic documentation but genuine expert imaging. To achieve this, we implemented RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) acquisition, a technique that allows virtual variation of lighting on a surface to better read incised traces, superpositions and micro-relief.
To meet site constraints, Mercurio Imaging designed and deployed a specific RTI system, adapted to in situ wall acquisition, portable and usable at night in the archaeological corridor.
From this data, we produced RTI orthophotographs reaching 2 gigapixels. This level of resolution allows continuous reading of the walls while retaining the ability to zoom deeply into the image to observe millimetre-scale details. The aim is not only to see the walls in their entirety, but also to navigate at different scales, from the entire corridor down to the detail of a single stroke.
Beyond image production, we also developed a dedicated web platform, designed as a working tool for the scientific team. This platform allows visualisation of orthophotographs and high-resolution RTI, navigation through the data, cross-referencing of different documentary sources, and annotation of graffiti directly in the interface.
The Bruits de couloir platform thus forms the natural extension of the acquisition: it transforms a complex corpus of photographs, orthophotographs and scientific data into a structured, shareable and evolving consultation and analysis environment.
This project fully illustrates Mercurio Imaging’s approach: designing field-adapted systems, producing images of very high scientific value, and developing the digital tools that make them truly usable.
The project platform is accessible here: https://bdc-pompei.com