Nanocomposite materials for the safeguard of cultural heritage against pollution and microorganisms

The role of Cultural Heritage in Italy is universally recognized as extremely important for the country. What is not agreed upon is the specific reasons for that importance, which is usually attributed to the, quite uninteresting, fact that Italy has the largest number of cultural objects in the world. It is argued, instead, that such a large patrimony, if correctly taken, is actually an occasion to foster advanced developments, such as that of digital technologies for Virtual Cultural Heritage. CNR has been promoting research and development in the field of Cultural Heritage for a long time. It has established a Department of Cultural Heritage as one of its main divisions, which has acted as a promoter and as a coordinator. It has also enhanced the research efforts of Institutes and Departments that belong to disciplinary fields which are apparently very distant from that of Cultural Heritage. The volume collects the contributions of the CNR to technologies related to Cultural Heritage, both in its semantic aspects, in the domains of Knowledge and Communication, and in its form aspect, in the domains of Protection, Diagnosis and Conservation.