Igel Column

The Igel Column, 23m high, is one of the best known Roman burial columns in Germany. A coloured reconstruction of this column is located at the Rhenish State Museum in Trier. The column is UNESCO World Heritage and was scanned by ArcTron 3D in 2012 using high-resolution 3D technologies. The original monument in Igel a.d. Mosel was recorded in 2013.

The burial column was built around 250 AD for the brothers Lucius Secundinius Aventinus and Lucius Secundinius Securus. It is decorated with reliefs showing everyday life scenes of cloth merchants as well as mythological images. Aside from its fuction as a burial column, the monument might also have been an advertisement for the drapery trade of the Secundians in Roman Trier.

At first, single reliefs were recorded with highest precision by a structured light scanner. Afterwards, the whole monument was recorded. We employed a combination of 3D laser scanning and 3D photogrammetry. Scans and detail images were taken from a lifting platform. A camera drone recorded additional material from the top of the column.

All scanning data was processed by several engineers at our headquarters near Regensburg. Different software packages were deployed for processing and texturing the 3D model. Photorealistically textured high-resolution 3D models as well as orthophotos (monochrome and coloured) were developed with our 3D information system aSPECT 3D. They are the basis for restoration work.

The deployment of these combined scanning technologies allows a cost effective high-resolution documentation of such objects.