The church of Santa Maria de Villamayor situated in Piloña (Asturias, Spain) is the only vestige of an old Benedictine monastery, from which it only conserves the semicircular apse, the nave frontal wall and a facade framed in the new construction. The apse is covered by a barrel vault in its straight section and by a quarter sphere vault in its curved section. This one is decorated with two embedded columns crowned with capitals with vegetable motifs, cornice filled with metopes and ridge tiles with tetrapetal motifs and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic roll modillons. Two horizontal chequered bands enclose its perimeter.

The uplifting objective was the elaboration of true orthophotographs for the West, South and East facades to a 1:25 scale.

Church of Santa María de Villamayor. Elevation true orthophotos. Consejería de Cultura, Comunicación Social y Turismo. Principality of Asturias.
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Especially interesting on this project is the diversity on the modillons, located on the semicircular apse, since the illustrated motifs as well as the chequered zone had to be suitably registered for their later analysis and interpretation.

Additionally, the elevation plans of the facades and the apse were delineated, to the same scale, departing from the true orthophotographs.

Church of Santa María de Villamayor. Elevation plans. Consejería de Cultura, Comunicación Social y Turismo. Principality of Asturias.
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It bears mentioning the West facade case, due to the little clearance available for taking the photographs. Since the street was roughly 4 m wide, it was necessary to take a greater number of photographs, that directly affected the later office work, prolonging in a considerable way getting the expected results.

Church of Santa María de Villamayor. Cross-section and longitudinal-section plans. Consejería de Cultura, Comunicación Social y Turismo. Principality of Asturias.
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