Three Dimensional Reconstitution of an Old Town from Historical Documents: Case of the Medina of Jijel in Algeria

Abstract

The three-dimensional reconstitution of cities and urban tissues was the subject of several studies and researches. In order to obtain the acquisition of the geometry of architectural or urban sets, some studies are based on Photogrammetric or on computer vision. Others have focused on the development of tools of acquisition from a laser providing a 3D scatter plot. Some of them yet focused towards the development of CAD software. The automatic generation for morphological 3D representation based on the exploitation of the architectural knowledge basis is also an option. This type of work becomes more relevant and legitimate when it concerns old cities in state of ruin or more simply missing whose remains only prints or literary descriptions similar to our case study, the old town of Jijel that many people ignore its existence. The aim of this work is to achieve a 3D reconstitution of buildings of this town based on historical documents, mostly prints, digitized old maps and plans, as well as literary texts (tales of travelers, military records, and history books). The method developed can solve and generate possible urban volumes in the most frequent cases. The 3D model obtained, despite its geometric simplicity, can view the city from different angles and open new opportunities for research in history, architecture and town planning.