The church dedicated to Saints Boris and Gleb on Kołoży in Grodno was erected in the 12th century (the first records from 1138). Repaired and rebuilt several times, including at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1853, as a result of slipping down the slope of the German embankment, the southern wall and part of the eastern and western elevations collapsed. At that time, the temple was excluded from worship. The ruin was secured at the beginning of the 20th century. From 1948, the building served as a museum. In 1991, the church of Saints Borys and Gleb was restored to worship.

Orthodox church build of brick, stone brick weft, nave vault (not preserved) supported on brick walls of external and internal pillars. The wall structure has an open-to-inside vessel with an acoustic function. Outside, in the wall, applied ceramic plaques with colored glaze and irregular stone blocks / slabs /, colored differently. Internal plasters preserved on approximately 10% of the surface of the original walls and fragments of the vaults. Wall paintings preserved remotely, above all in wall niches. The documentation work was carried out by the team of the Polish Brotherhood of the Knights of Gutenberg, and financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Ministry's funds under the programs Protecting cultural heritage abroad in 2015 and in 2016.

The works carried out in the years 2015 - 2016 in the church area included the creation of a set of photographs of the original internal and external walls of the church. All the walls were registered in fragments that joined together covered their entire surface. With the use of specialized software, all photographs were combined in high resolution, thanks to which distortion-free orthophotographs of the walls were obtained. During the digitalization process, a total of over 1500 photos were taken - all photographs in high resolution. In addition to photographic registration, geodetic measurements were carried out, allowing for the drawing of vector drawings of the whole, and as a result, the development of the 3D model of the building.

Works done in the interior of the temple in 2015 and 2016 are elements of the comprehensive digital inventory, scientific research and interdisciplinary research of the 12th century Orthodox church. St. Boris and Gleb on Korzeń in Grodno. Its effects will be included in the final report, which will be the starting material for further specialist research. The final result will be the implementation, critical analysis and publication of research results as well as full photogrammetric documentation of the object, iconographic, palaeographic analysis, chronological stratification, digital reconstruction of figural elements of wall polychrome (unique in character) and architectural detail as well as conclusions from the archival query.

The executive team stayed in Grodno in August 2015 and in September 2016. The scope of works envisaged for this period included -

- detailed photographic and graphic design (vector drawing) of the surface of internal and external walls (including relics of paintings and gemecks). - implementation of a spatial church model - execution of geodesic measurements of the church - sampling and description of mortar and pigment samples for physical and chemical tests. - making a set of thermographic images of the object - identification of threats to the preservation of the monument in its current state.

In total, during the work in 2015 and 2016, the team made over 2,000 photographs. Some of them were made in the technique of mosaic photography, which allowed in later processing to perform gigapanorama of the church walls in the ortho version. The interiors of the church were illuminated with flash light with a total power of 7 kWs. Color calibration was carried out using the X-Rite kit. The Nikon D800 camera with a 40 MPx sensor and a set of fixed distortion low-focal lenses was used to make photographs.

Rok 2015

The executive team stayed in Grodno in August for 10 days. The scope of work planned for this period to be carried out is the documentation of the northern wall inside the church. Work began with the removal of all elements of church equipment (icons, lamps, etc.) with the consent of the owner of the object (Orthodox parish of St. Boris and Gleb in Grodno). The condition was to overturn the original state after the completion of works. After removing the movable equipment, it was also necessary to move some of the furniture forming the shop devoted to devotional items, which enabled access to the covered fragments of the walls. It was particularly important to clean the niche 2, in which there are fragments of the original figural polychrome.

The entire N wall was photographed using the technique of mosaic photography. It consists in photographing fragments of the whole, and then during processing of the files, individual photographs are stitched and thus files of the entire wall are created in a high degree of accuracy. The configuration of the interior of the church did not allow to register the view of the N wall in any other way, due to the pillar (P pillar), standing at a distance of about 1.5 m from the wall. In no setting of the camera there is no access to the entire surface of the wall N. The interior of the church was illuminated with flashlight with UV filters installed. After setting a constant and even illumination, a color pattern was photographed to calibrate the colors during processing.

Access to niches 1 and 2 is also difficult. They are located under the choir ceiling and they were covered with equipment and structural elements of the stand with devotional items. The documentation of niches 1 and 2 was possible after removing the furniture.

All niches were documented in the same way. Using the programmable panoramic head, a series of photographs were made, which during the machining allowed later to construct virtual tours in the interior of every niche.

The niche of the N wall 2 has been documented in detail due to the preserved traces of the original polychrome. Fragments of niche walls with preserved polychrome have been recorded in the technique of mosaic photography and glued in the gigapanoram format with the dimensions - main wall niche - 29503 x 21664 px and glyphs on the side walls - 28000 x 5364 px. Preserved fragments of plasters were recorded in infrared (IR) using Heliopan 800 and 1000 filters, exposed in white light.

In niches 2 and other points of the original walls, samples of mortars and pigments were taken for further physical and chemical tests in order to thoroughly analyze the remains of the original plasters.

Photographic material made during the stay of the team in Grodno was processed in a graphic studio in Warsaw. All photographs were taken in RAW format and then called to TIF and JPG format. Gigapanorama were made of mosaic pictures of the entire N wall and individual niches.

Rok 2016

The executive team stayed in Grodno in September for 14 days. The scope of work planned for implementation in 2016 is the completion of documentation work started in the previous year. The works included the photographic documentation inside the church of the remains of the W wall, the sanctuary, prothesis L and prothesis residues P, pillars L and P, tunnels in the walls and all preserved external walls. Work began with cleaning access to the niches in the W wall, they were pledged with elements of the church shop. The technique of photographing was identical to that of the previous stage, extended by techniques allowing the creation of 3D models of the object during processing.

Photographic documentation has been complemented by a series of photos in the thermovision technique with the help of a professional Flir thermal imaging camera.

Complementing photographic documentation was the implementation of full measurement documentation by a specialized surveying company. The geodesic measurements of the church were made on the basis of the geodetic network established on the site in the local coordinate system. For measurements, Leica used a modern mirrorless total station with full automation, mirror tracking, and a mirrorless measurement up to 1000 m with accuracy of +/- 2 mm. The error of determining the position coordinates was less than 1 mm each time. As a result of the measurement work, work reprints and measurement marks found on the site have been measured, probably founded by surveying services to monitor the settlement of the church and all the characteristic features of the building such as: wall edges, bends, stairs inside walls, windows, doors, some openings in the walls , characteristic elements of decorations, vaults, wooden beams, etc. In the area of ​​the church, a total of about 1600 measurements were made.

Measurement of the building's characteristic elements allowed for the creation of appropriate cross-sectional and longitudinal sections of the measured elements and their vector mapping.

Measuring technologies used in this project are currently among the best available on the market.

Rok 2017

The scope of work planned for this year's project included the completion of full digital processing of photographic materials and measurement data as well as physical tests on samples of pigments and mortars taken from the niche of the 2nd N wall and the original plasters of the upper batch.

Scope and description of physical and chemical tests for mortars and pigments taken samples. In the first stage of detailed interdisciplinary research including min. petrographic and chemical analysis, representative double samples were collected (cross section through painting layers - petrographic and SEM tests, and a sample of pure pigment for INAA tests), additionally samples of pure mortar were taken and where possible, leaded white (up to INAA). Preparations were made of them. The tests for microscopic examination were embedded in the resin (cross-sections through the painting layers), which were then photographed in reflected light and initially described. In the final stage of the research, the following complementary research methods were used to determine the stratigraphy of the painting layers and to identify mortars and pigments: optical microscopy in reflected light electron microscopy (SEMEDX i SEMWDS) instrumental neutron activation analysis Chemical analyzes in the micro-area along with graphic documentation (SE and BSE photos) were made at the National Geological Institute - National Research Institute in Warsaw using a scanning electron microscope LEO 1430 equipped with an energy dispersion detector (EDS) Oxford ISIS 300, and with the use of micro probes Electron CamX SX 100 equipped with five WDS spectrometers and an EDS spectrometer. The analysis of samples of mortars and pigments was carried out using the INAA method without chemical separation using the standards of the analyzed elements. The samples were irradiated for 24 hours and chilled for 8 hours. Measurements of the activity of such samples and standards were carried out using two spectrometric lines : ORTEC HPGe detector with relative efficiency of 18% and an energy resolving power of 1.95 keV for 1332 keV energy - 60Co + the company's spectrometric system CANBERRA detector HPGe by CANBERRA with a relative efficiency of 60% and an energy resolution of 1.92 keV for energy 1332 keV - 60Co + the spectrometric system of the CANBERRA company - analysis of gamma-ray spectra GENIE 2000.

Digital processing of photographic materials. All photographs taken in 2015-2016 were continuously called from the RAW format to the TIF (lossless) and JPG formats. During the invocation, descriptive metadata was implemented into these files. The sets of photographs prepared in this way were used during the year 2017 to prepare digital models of the church in 3D. The ReMake and ReCap software from Autodesk was used for the basic operation - converting photo sets into a point cloud. Restrictions on the size of photo sets have made it necessary to group and process individual elements of the church separately. In this way, separate point clouds were created -
- external solid
- wall W
- wall N
- prothesis L
- sanctuary
- pillar L
- pillar R
- empora N

For detailed reproduction in high detail, two additional point clouds were created : - niche 1 and 2 of the wall W - niche 2 of the wall N

Specialized software is required to analyze and further use the resulting point clouds. The resulting files are large and require strong computers to run. For the purpose of presentation and wide access to the resulting materials, the prepared point clouds were further processed using the 3DSMax program from Autodesk and Pix4D from Pix4D SA. The effect of these studies are AVI animation files of individual elements, presenting their actual appearance and proportions. Further processing of point clouds enabled orthophotography of the main fragments of the object - three external façades (fourth, facade S, is a wooden structure of no historic significance), wall W, wall N with the western part of Prothesis L, sanctuary, prothesis L and sanctuary with prothesis L after removal of the iconostasis. Prothesis R has been preserved in a small fragment and access to the remains of the walls was very difficult. During the registration, the documentation of tunnels in the walls (L and R) was also carried out. Photographs taken there are of a documentary nature only and do not allow further studies.

The combination of a spatial grid of surveying measurements with a set of photographs and point clouds allowed to create a simplified 3D model of the object. The simplification in this case concerns the lack of textures on the model. This limitation is related to the way the model is presented. In this technology, the model itself is run on Autodesk servers and can be viewed using the native Autodesk browser. On the project website a model link is embedded, displayed as a separate frame (FRAME), launched from any web browser (Autodesk recommends using the Google Chrome browser). In this model, the distribution and proportions of individual elements, including the location of the so-called pitchers, is compatible with the original. This model allows you to make any cross-sections through the church's body, as well as to take a virtual tour of the interior. In the simplified model, iconostasis was not included.