Carlo Inglese, Marco Carpiceci, Fabio Colonnese, Mediated representations after laser scanning. The Monastery of Aynalı and the architectural role of red pictograms. In CAA 2015 Keep The Revolution Going. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. 2 vols, pp. 1182. S. Campana, R. Scopigno, G. Carpentiero & M. Cirillo, Eds. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2016, pp. 1105-1113. ISBN 9781784913389. Draft Mediated representations after laser scanning. The Monastery of Aynalı and the architectural role of red pictograms Carlo Inglese Department of History, Drawing and Restoration of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome carlo.inglese@uniroma1.it Marco Carpiceci Department of History, Drawing and Restoration of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome marco.carpiceci@uniroma1.it Fabio Colonnese, Department of History, Drawing and Restoration of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome f.colonnese@uniroma1.it Abstract In Cappadocian rock-cut architectures, red pictograms painted on rock surfaces were long considered only as abstract decorations of the iconoclastic period to be lately converted into polychromic frescoes, but today other interpretations appear plausible. In the Monastery of Aynalı near Göreme, pictograms both decorate the key elements and describe visual hierarchies with the secondary consequence of transforming the architecture itself in a huge representation: a sort of full-scale model to evoke existing buildings and to design its final configuration. Integrated applications of laser scanning and digital photography today allow the study of those decorations together with the actual shape of rock surfaces supporting them and may offer innovative contributes to archaeological and historical researches on Cappadocian rupestrian architecture. Keywords Monastery of Aynalı, Rock-cut architecture, Rupestrian habitat, Red pictograms 1. Introduction The Open Air Museum in Göreme is a large semi-circular rock cavea constituting the heart of a singular confederation of ancient monastic communities. It is formed by a huge number of rock-hewn churches, such as St. Catherine’s Chapel, the Apple Church, the Sandal Church, the Pantocrator Church, and whole monasteries that hardly survived to the persistent geological erosion. In 1985 UNESCO inserted such a system of rupestrian settlements into the list of World Heritage sites for its unique anthropological, historical and artistic value. Since 2007 an Italian National Research on the Rock-cut Architecture has been working in Cappadocia 1 to study the environment and the monuments of the rupestrian habitat in order to support Turkish administrators and cultural operators in the complex actions of preservation, restoration and transmission of their cultural heritage (Carpiceci, 2013). The first achievements of this mission can be appreciated in the Forty-Martyrs Church at Sahinefendi, recently restored and open to public. 2 In the last two years the unit of Sapienza University of Rome has been surveying a number of carved monuments and produced drawings in the area of Göreme. Despite the executors of 2013 and 2014 survey campaigns are almost the same and the strong analogies between the architectural subjects, deep differences exist between the results. The former campaign focused mainly on the Church of Forty Martyrs at Sahinefendi because the restoration of its significant painting cycle was to be quickly completed. The 2014 campaign has based on these early results and has expanded them to the surroundings in order to define the urban context of Sahinefendi community (Carpiceci and Inglese, 2015). The ultimate goal of this latter campaign was to define the church relationships with the urban context by focusing not only on its direct surroundings, but also on other isolated groups of rock-cave rooms. These two distinct phases resulted a complete survey of the rupestrian village of Sahinefendi, with the Church of the Forty Martyrs pivoting the whole area. In the Open Air Museum in Göreme, the two-year survey campaign focused on the main churches located in the semi-circular auditorium, such as the St. Catherine’s Chapel, the Elmali Kilise (Apple Church), the Carakili Kilise (Sandal Church), Azize Barbara Kilisesi (Church of Saint Barbara), Karanlik Kilise (Dark