Digital Preservation

As we were regrettably reminded recently with Notre Dame, historic structures, or even parts of them, can be here one day and gone the next. Thankfully, we live in a time where digital technology allows us to preserve them through photographs, video, and even 3D scanning. Collecting this type of data on our historical structures is so important, and has been a crucial aid to those working to rebuild the parts of Notre Dame that were lost to fire.

3D scanning is currently being used at Sedlec to capture the current state of the entire ossuary, before cleaning and restructuring, to help restorers reassemble the pieces as close to their original arrangement as possible. Back in 2016, when we first heard about the beginning stages of the restorations at Sedlec, we approached the Roman Catholic Parish of Kutna Hora-Sedlec for permission to use non-invasive photogrammetry 3D scanning to assist in collecting and preserving this data about the ossuary.

Photogrammetry is essentially the process of taking hundreds of high resolution photographs of an object, and processing them in specialized professional software, that triangulates 3D point cloud information about the surface properties of that object. We are then able to recreate an extremely accurate 3D representation of that object for further studying and archiving. As part of the scanning process, we also took meticulous measurements, sketches, and notes for key points in the ossuary to help scale the data after it was processed.

We hope to return to the ossuary soon to gather even more photos and data, as part of our ongoing project. And to possibly even digitally recreate parts of the ossuary decorations that have been lost to time, so that people may once again enjoy views of Sedlec as it existed when it was first built.

Follow our Journey

Website/Mailing List: The Sedlec Ossuary Project
Instagram: @sedlec.ossuary
Facebook: Sedlec Ossuary Project
Twitter: Sedlec.Ossuary
Reddit: Sedlec Ossuary
Pinterest: Sedlec Ossuary

Location: Sedlec, 284 03 Kutna Hora, Czechia

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