THE PROMOTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE THROUGH INTERNET 
USING ADVANCED AUDIO-VISUAL INFORMATION : 
THE VENETIAN CASTLES OF PELOPONNISOS 
E. Bakourou**, V. Tsioukas*, I. Katzougraki**, E. Stylianidis*, K. Papadimitriou*, P. Patias* 
*The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Dept. of Cadastre, Photogrammetry and Cartography, 
Email : patias@topo.auth.gr 
**The 5" Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Greece 
Email : protocol@Seba.culture.gr 
Commission V, Working Group V/4 
KEY WORDS: Audio-Visual Information, Internet, Databases, Visualization, Cultural Heritage 
ABSTRACT: 
The Venetian Castles of Peloponnisos consist important monuments of the cultural heritage of Greece as well as a tourists' 
attraction. The precise recording of the characteristics of each castle, namely the construction, architectural, historical, folklorist 
information, is a very important job that needs to be accomplished by the archaeologists that are responsible for these monuments. 
The 5" Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Greece co-operated for this reason, with the Department of Cadastre, Photogrammetry 
and Cartography of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. This paper describes the product of this co-operation, namely the 
creation of an Information System with the purpose to record, process and browse all the concerning data in an internet/intranet 
configuration. 
The photogrammetric data that have been produced, were digital orthophotomaps of the castles’ surrounding areas using 1:4,000 
aerial images. These orthoimages present the most recent and updated views the castles’ condition on large-scale maps (1:2,000). 
Additional information has been supplied to the system concerning information, which describes verbally the historical, 
architectural, and other qualitative information about the castles. Also, many multimedia files have been used to enhance and present 
visually some of the above-mentioned qualitative information, e.g. images of blasted parts of the castles’ fortification. Also, 
panoramic images and video sequences have been produced providing a virtual tour inside and around the archaeological site of each 
castle and a new 3D visualization tool was developed, using the draped models of the castles’ produced by photogrammetric process 
of the aerial images. 
An Internet site has been created through which a scientific user or a candidate visitor of the castles can obtain valuable information 
about them (i.e. accessibility options, distance from neighbouring cities, etc) as well he can also make a virtual tour inside and 
around the castle. 
1. INTRODUCTION the most of them i.e. Koroni, Methoni, Malvasia, Mpourtzi, 
Akronafplia, Palamidi a digital orthomap of their surrounding 
Photogrammetry has been used quite a lot lately (Griin and area has been created using aerial photogrammetric techniques. 
Beutner 2000, Gemenetzis et. al., 2000, Ogleby 2000) for the These orthomaps will be used for the future creation of maps 
promotion of Cultural Heritage objects and monuments in and guides for touristic purposes. 
general. Many advantages of the photogrammetric techniques 
such as 
eo the ability to produce an accurate model of an 2. PHOTOGRAMMETRIC PRODUCTS 
archaeological site or object 
In order to create the orthomaps of the castles’ surrounding 
area, aerial photos were obtained in a 1:4000 scale. The control 
points were collected form the Greek Military Service maps (of 
e the visualization and virtual reality techniques that 1:5000 scale). 
provide a better inspection of the object in study 
e the extremely accurate measurements that are 
obtained (using the least amount of time and money) 
The creation of a Digital Terrain DTM from the stereoscopic 
  
have been used in a special case of a documentation and 
presentation project of cultural heritage monuments: the 
Venetian castles of Peloponnisos. 
The 5" Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities is responsible for the 
restoration and conservation of several of the most impressing 
and beautiful castles that were built during the occupation by 
the Venetian of the southern part of the Greek mainland. For 
image models lead to the creation of the desired orthomaps at 
scale of 1:2000 (fig. 1). 
The combination of the DTM and the orthomap has been used 
for the creation of the image-draped model of the castles 
surrounding areas. In that way a realistic view of the castle area 
has been created (fig. 2). 
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