An Integrated Approach to Archaeological Heritage: The Shipwreck Museum in the Kyrenia Castle, Cyprus

Digital survey tools allow a fast acquisition of large datasets, documenting extensively the different phases of buildings and urban settlements; the data integration level has recently evolved so to keep together details at different scales and now is easy to manage, with a significant improvement in the overall understanding of built heritage. In this case, we integrated Terrestrial Photogrammetry, Aerial Photogrammetry and Terrestrial Lasergrammetry for the documentation of a large fortification, the Castle of Kyrenia, which concomitantly provided extensive data for the design of a museum inside the castle. The survey started within the international workshop held therein in May 2018, with the scientific coordination of Girne American University (Cyprus), Özyeğin University (Turkey), and Florence University (Italy). Different student teams, supervised by experienced tutors, collected about 360 laser scans, more than 1900 UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) aerial pictures, over 30000 terrestrial hi-res photographs, and covered the external walled enclosure with a 3D eye remote shooting unit mounted on a telescopic pole. After a preliminary partial data processing accomplished on site for teaching purposes, the complete data elaboration is still ongoing within the research activities of DIDAlab (System of laboratories of the Architecture Department at Florence University), with the cooperation of Özyeğin University, Istanbul. Within the specific case of the Kyrenia Castle, a densely stratified construction, dating from the Byzantine times to the Lusignan transformations, and the Venetian redesign, through some lesser Ottoman modifications and the English additions, the research established formal and meaningful relationships between the container, the castle, and the content, the archaeological collection. The castle hosts today a collection of artefacts, mostly belonging to the underwater excavations of the Kyrenia Shipwreck. This collection awaits to be reorganised within the museum, including its greater part, which to this day lies in the deposits, by enhancing the communication with the visitor. We connected the design task to three different levels of interiority, the museum in the castle, the ship in the museum, the collection inside the ship. Within this topological stratification, which dates diachronically from the 4th c. BC, to the British colonial rule of Cyprus, it is necessary to establish a visitor path that can determine a comprehensible narrative of the collection and of the museum itself.