Integrated Survey Procedures for the Recognition of Lost Spaces: The Library of the Monumental Complex of Santa Maria della Sanità in Naples

Abstract

This paper proposes a source-driven interpretative workflow in which terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is employed as a metric tool for the recognition of lost conventual spaces. The research investigates the spaces currently occupied by the former Ariello Printing House in Naples, originally belonging to the monumental complex of Santa Maria della Sanità, a highly stratified architectural system profoundly transformed by nineteenth-century urban interventions. These alterations disrupted the original spatial and altimetric continuity between the convent’s levels, obscuring the location of spaces documented in historical sources, including the Dominican Library. A range-based survey carried out with a FARO Focus 3D scanner generated a detailed point cloud, critically compared with archival documents, historical cartography, iconographic sources, and previous surveys of the lower levels. The metric validation provided by the TLS data allowed the verification of geometric continuities and the plausible identification of the convent Library, contributing to the reconstruction of the original architectural topology within a complex urban context.