Photonics Technologies for the Safeguarding of Cultural assets

Safety and security of cultural heritage entail a huge variety of issues, all inherent to the protection of cultural assets from risks of damages of both anthropic and natural origin. Due to the high heterogeneity of cultural assets, which includes movable and immovable cultural properties (paintings, art objects, monuments, archeological sites, etc.), the safeguard of this patrimony involves diverse aspects and different classes of problems that need advanced technological solutions. Photonic technologies may offer these innovative solutions and they are increasingly used in the cultural heritage field to address several issues of safety and security. In this chapter two examples of implementation of photonics for this applicative area are illustrated. The first example deals with applications of optical sensors and optical fiber-based systems for monitoring conditions of artworks on exhibits while the second example is from the field of laser-technology and deals with the application of coherent interferometry to assess invisible impact caused on transit of movable artworks to exhibitions by repeated conditions of alteration and handling.