Single-headed Eagle - Monastery of Panagia Kosmosotira
Date - Timespan:Middle Byzantine Era 8th - 12th century AD

A large part of iconocraphy and sculptural decoration found on the katholiko of Panagia Kosmosotira are well preserved. The theme enclosed ceramic ornament is a symbol of the Komnenos dynasty. It is considered one of the oldest emblems of Byzantium and according to researchers it indicates that there was a royal tomb of the family. The eagle is located at the north-east corner of the church. The presence of the single-headed eagle has prompted some to argue that the church is home to the mausoleum and tomb of Isaac Comnenus, as stated in the Typikon of the Monastery and the tradition.

Dimensions(Height, Width, Depth): (bounding box)
Materials: pantile,stone,brick
Keywords: Emblem, Churches, Monasteries, Monastery, Katholika, Byzantine, Architecture, Late Byzantine, Oriental Orthodox, Christianity, Orthodox Church
 The monument was selected to be 3D digitised within the framework of the European Commission funded 3D-ICONS project by the Athena RC Xanthi's Division. It's exterior was captured in 3D using the Structure-From-Motion (SFM) and Dense Multi-View 3D Reconstruction (DMVR) methods. Terrestrial photoshooting sessions were performed during the winter of 2014 always during cloudy days.The terrestrial photoshooting sessions were implemented using camera tripods and custom monopods (3m-9m adaptive). A pair of Samsung NX1000 20MP compact DSLR cameras with fixed 16mm and 20-50mm lenses were used. Agisoft PhotoScan (ver. 1.1) has been used for the production of monument's 3D digital replica. Although, flight paths were designed they have been performed manually due to bad GPS reception (high buildings around the monument). Furthermore, the calibration of the cameras was performed by the software itself. The processing of the image sequences was performed on two computer systems (CPU IntelCoreI74820K 3.7Ghz, 64GB RAM, Radeon R9 290X, Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit). Additionally, TOF laser scanning and empirical measurements between strong (in terms of visibility) feature points on the surface of the monument were performed and used to scale the 3D model.

Low Resolution Model: ??K Facets - Image Texture Size:1024^2
Medium Resolution Model: ??K Facets - Image Texture Size:4096^2
High Resolution Model: ??M Facets - Image Texture Size:8192^2
Resolution: ~2cm (between consecutive points distance in raw data model)


For higher resolution versions of the digital replica (raw data) please contact Dr. Anestis Koutsoudis at akoutsou at ceti dot gr.



Copyright 2014 Athena Research Centre. All rights reserved. The 3D ICONS project is funded by the European Commissions ICT Policy Support Programme.
For technical enquiries and additional information related to the 3D-ICONS project or the 3D data displayed in this page please contact Dr. Anestis Koutsoudis at akoutsou at ceti dot gr.