With the meeting of June 3 this year the Nano Cathedral project kicked off, supported by the European Union within the nanotechnology field applied to Horizon 2020 cultural heritage with a fund of about 6.5 million euro.

A total of six monumental buildings will be for three years under the eyes and hands of petrographers, geologists, chemists and restorers of the institutes belonging to the Consortium: five cathedrals have been selected to represent the cultural diversity within Europe from the perspective of developing shared values and transnational identity, and a contemporary monumental building entirely clad in Carrara marble, the Opera House of Oslo.

Purpose: the testing of nanomaterials for the conservation of marble and the outer surfaces of our ‘cathedrals’.
The field of investigation to check degradation, testing new consolidating and protective products is the Cathedral of Pisa together with the Cathedrals of Cologne, Vienna, Ghent and Vitoria.
For the selection of case studies we have crosschecked requirements for their historical and architectural value but also for the different types of construction materials – marble, limestone and sandstone – as well as the relocation of six monumental buildings according to European climates.

The Cathedral of Pisa is the most southern, fully positioned in Mediterranean climate, therefore subject to degradation and very different from those which the weather conditions of the Scandinavian peninsula recorded; all the intermediate climate phases are modulated through Ghent, Vitoria, Cologne and Vienna.

At the conclusion of the three-year project, once the analysis in situ and in the laboratory are completed and all the experiments are tested on each different identified portion in each monumental building, an intervention protocol will be defined in detail in order to identify the mineralogical and petrographic characteristics of stone materials and of their degradation, the assessment of the causes and mechanisms of associated alteration, including interactions with factors of environmental pollution. Then we will be able to identify the most appropriate method of restoration and testing of nanotechnology products for the consolidation and protection of different stone materials.

In 2018 we hope to have new materials to protect and safeguard the ‘skin’ of our historic buildings and monuments for a long time.

For further information: http://www.nanocathedral.eu/