Coastal towers and fortifications in Tuscany

Minerva Repository > Case Studies > Coastal towers and fortifications in Tuscany

Introduction

The coastal towers and forts of the littoral are part of the historical and architectural heritage of Tuscany. In the course of time, some of them have been completely destroyed and the traces can be found only through documents, archives and historical maps. For others, only the ruins remain or, sometimes, as in the case of the Matilde Tower of Viareggio, restoration and renovation works have saved them.

Geographical aspect

Studies have reconstructed the coastal military organization of Tuscany (Maretti, 1991; Guarducci et al., 2014) through the use of cartographies, iconographies, photographs, written accounts, etc.

In total, more than 160 sites of fortified architecture along the coasts have been archived. It’s a very extensive network that extended from the border with Lazio, with the armed post of Graticciaia, to the Mouth of the Magra River. They were also present on the islands of the Tuscan archipelago (Gorgona, Capraia, Elba, Pianosa and Montecristo).

Aims

The following case study presents a methodology for creating a digital database using previous studies and archival documents, completed by field surveys and 3D reconstruction.

We have chosen 4 towers for the creation of the database:

Matilde tower (Viareggio)
Fortino nuovo (Migliarino)
Batteria Bocca di Serchio (Migliarino)
Migliarino’s fort (Migliarino)

Field surveys’s Instruments :

GPS
Compass
Photo camera with integrated GPS
UAV

Compilation of a field survey form with the following information:

Exact location of the property
Area of sediment
Photograph from and to the property from the 8 cardinal points
Photography of particular
State of preservation
Brief description

Level of Competence

Basic to advanced.

Skills to Be Learned

Methodology to realize field surveys for Cultural Heritage (using GPS, relevant information).
Transform GPS data into a shapefile.
Intervisibility analysis
Create Geodatabase with field surveys data.

Workflow

graph TB id1([Field Survey]):::box id1 --> id2([Extraction of GPS data]):::box id2 --> id3([Compilation of the form]):::box id3 -->id4([Data analysis]):::box id4 --> id5([Data creation]):::box click id1 "https://oleroy.gitpages.huma-num.fr/minerva/project/field_survey/" classDef box fill:#fcb900,color:#fff,stroke-width:0px; classDef arrow fill:#fafafa,color:#555;

Programs used:

Geo Setter
Google Earth
Excel
QGIS

Data

Archaeological site map
Geoscopio Toscana