Visualizing the Invisible: Digital restitution from an integrated archaeological, remote sensing, and geophysical research of a Late Roman villa in Dürres (Albania) Daniele Malfitana, Giovanni Leucci, Giovanni Fragalà, Nicola Masini, Giuseppe Scardozzi Istituto per i Beni Archeologici e Monumentali CNR Catania, Italy daniele.malfitana@cnr.it, n.masini@ibam.cnr.it g.leucci@ibam.cnr.it, g.scardozzi@ibam.cnr.it g.fragala@ibam.cnr.it Giuseppe Cacciaguerra Department of Humanities University of Catania Catania, Italy g.cacciaguerra@ibam.cnr.it Cettina Santagati Department of Architecture University of Catania Catania, Italy cettina.santagati@dau.unict.it Eduard Shehi Albanian Institute of Archaeology Department of Antiquities Durrës, Albania eduardshehi@hotmail.com Abstract—Paper focused on the first results of a joint geo-archaeological research project of urban archeology in the ancient Roman city of Dürres. Starting from the reading of the historical evidence and interpretation of archival records (i.e. aerial photos related to the twenties, thirties and forties years of last century, before the urban transformations between the two World Wars and later, and satellite images of the sixties and recent years) the research proposes to develop targeted investigations with the integrated use of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) method and image processing techniques of contemporary photographs in order to locate a late Roman villa. All the information provided by aerial and GPR analysis as well as literature references constituted the basis for attempting a virtual reconstruction of the lost Roman’s villa in order to give the visual idea of how it probably was. Accordingly to London and Seville Charter principles, different levels of reliability in data interpretation have been identified and characterized aiming at making transparent the methodological choices and the accuracy of reconstruction undertaken. Keywords— Urban archaeology; Roman archaeology; image processing; GPR survey; Dürres (Albany); 3d modeling; virtual reconstruction I. THE GEO-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT: FIRST OVERVIEW After a general research interest in the past years along a strong specific interest for the Hellenistic and Roman towns of ancient Mediterranean, between East and West, by the two Heads of this new research project, a permit for a new geo- archaeological interdisciplinary research project in ancient Dürres (Dyrrachium) was issued in 2010 by the Ministry of Culture of the Albanian Republic and the Department of Antiquities (IBAM) of the National Research Council of Italy and the Department of Antiquities of the Albanian Archaeological Institute. The geo-archaeological research project in Dürres aims to offer new insights in the field of Classical Mediterranean archaeology and, in this particular case, in the Albanian archaeology where exist a long tradition of studies. The main aim of this new research project is to pave the way for a joint cooperation between the two Institutions involved through also an exchange of methodologies, techniques and training education of young Albanian scholars as well as researchers. This joint Italian and Albanian interdisciplinary collaboration will offer a lot of information and details on various archaeological and cultural aspects of the ancient town of Dürres, hoping to involve in it also many Albanian young archaeologists, researchers and students of the local Faculties of Humanities as well as of the local Superintendence. The combination and integration of various evidence from geophysical, surveys, excavations, interpretation of aerial historical photos (actually planned only in a second stage considering that we are working in a urban context) and interdisciplinary research will provide a more complete understanding of the ancient town and its history than would be not possible from excavation alone. II. THE GENERAL HISTORICAL SETTING In the 7 th century B.C. Dürres was a Greek colony (Epidamnos) that after the Peloponnesian War, in 431B.C., back under the Illyrian command (the kings Glaukias), which drove the Greek colonizers. In Roman period the city 978-1-4799-3169-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 511