The complex of St. Eustache in Göreme, Cappadocia, reading the relationship between the landscape and a very articulated settlement

Maria ANDALORO¹ / Roberto BIXIO² / Carmela CRESCENZI²
(¹Dipartimento di Scienze dei Beni Culturali, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy / ²Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy)

Keywords: Rupestrian, Turkey, digital survey, Mural paints, 3D Laser Scanner

Abstract:
The settlement of the St. Eustache church is excavated in the volcanic stones in the back part of the Tokali church, this second monument is a very well known rupestrian church in the Cappadocia area, but the structure of the whole settlement in which the Tokali is inserted it’s still subject of studies and hypothesis. So the St. Eustache church, with its small room, covered with a vault enriched by a beautiful mural painting,  its sepultures and its very articulated system of secondary rooms and tunnels, creates a rich and very challenging subject for the scholar and the surveyor.  In fact the St. Eustache settlement is carved in the peaks closing the plateau over the back of the Tokali, because of its higher level it looks directly toward the Uçhisar Castle, placed at a linear distance of four kilometers, creating all the conditions to communicate with this important outpost using visual signals.  In the remains of its tunnels, crossing the stone from the plateau to the  rear “sword valley” there is the possibility to read the defensive system of the people from that time, where the church, the houses, the farms were working together to guaranty the security to its inhabitants. The digital survey, done using phase shift laser scanner all along the tunnels and all around the stones along the plateau and the “valley of the swords” has created the first complete and detailed documentation of this settlement, allowing the first in deep studies about this meaningful church.