Restoration and conservation issues such as consolidation, cleaning and protection of artistic objects require the development of sustainable, eco-friendly and high-tech materials and methods. The understanding of processes and mechanisms concerning the deterioration of historic and archaeological artworks and of their interactions with the environment, together with the evaluation of the effectiveness of conservation treatments, critically depends on the ability to obtain information on the chemical nature of the constituting materials and on their degradation under ageing. It is therefore essential to develop innovative materials and new analytical and instrumental methodologies.

In this context, the eight research Units involved in the project will carry out three parallel lines of research, devoted to the development of environmentally friendly methods of conservation (cleaning, consolidation and protection), to the study of deterioration processes and interactions between the organic and inorganic materials (fundamental research) and to the development of appropriate analytical methods to pursue the first two objectives (developing instrumental methods). In addition, a part of the project is dedicated to dissemination of the results.