The Main Phases of an Early Medieval Church: Virtual Reconstructions for Cultural Heritage Promotion

n recent years there has been growing interest in the use of information technology in scientific fields related to the humanities and cultural heritage, both for research purposes and for the promotion of artifacts and monuments, such as ancient edifices of archeological interest. In fact, such buildings usually have complicated stratigraphies, especially when used continuously for long periods of time. Therefore, understanding their evolution, both in terms of appearance and structure, can become challenging for experts and even impossible for the general public. Such drawbacks can be overcome by taking advantage of virtual reconstructions: these make it possible to analyze in depth not only the geometry of the current configuration, but also to study and verify reconstructive hypotheses of damaged or lost artifacts, or parts of them. As an added value, virtual models allow both local and remote fruition of the monument they reproduce and regardless of the fact that it may be physically inaccessible for some reason. This paper focuses on the methodology followed to obtain adequate virtual reconstructions of the configurations that the church of Santa Sofia in Benevento, a small town in southern Italy, has assumed from the time of its foundation to the present day. The research has necessarily blended approaches and methods from the humanities and mathematical engineering and the reconstruction of lost or deeply modified parts required the study of different sources, with the integration of geometric and architectural data with archeological and archival findings. The resulting 3D models are an example of virtual heritage in which both spatial and temporal data cannot be separated to understand the evolution of the building under analysis.