"Digital reconstruction and the early archaic temple at the Mon Repos villa, Corfu"

Abstract: The Mon Repos villa at the outskirts of old Corfu is the site of one of the
great early archaic Greek temples. However, the temple remains largely
unknown due to a lack of study and publication. A 1914 campaign of
excavation was cut short by World War I, and a 1960’s project by the Greek
Archaeological Service remains largely unpublished.

Based on my recent study of Its remains in the archaeological museums on
Corfu, I present a new reconstruction of the temple at Mon Repos. Finished
by ca. 600 B.C., the early temple is represented by hundreds of fragments of
elaborately carved Doric columns and a monumental terracotta roof, festooned
with brightly painted heads of lions, maidens, and gorgoneia. Built in the
generation before the first fully stone Doric temples, the Hera temple has
great significance to our understanding of the development of Greek
monumental architecture. Its designers borrowed widely, incorporating
elements from Near Eastern art and Etruscan building.

With the support of an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship in 2010-2011, I
experimented with a color 3D scanner to create a digital catalogue of the
550 architectural fragments now in the Corfu museums. With few parallels
among contemporary buildings and many enigmatic types of terracottas and
blocks, high-resolution computer models represent the most effective method
for reconstructing the rich architectural assemblage. This fully digital
process also permits the immediate presentation of results via the project
website, where visitors can already display and manipulate architectural
models in 3D. Mon Repos is thus important not only to our knowledge of the
development of Greek monumental arts, but as a model for future digital
publication.