The contribution of urban-scale environmental monitoring to materials diagnostics: a study on the Cathedral of Modena (Italy)

The problem of environmental monitoring aimed at identifying and evaluating the weathering mechanisms affecting historical stoneworks is here discussed and a methodology based on the use of already available, long-record, urban-scale environmental data is proposed. An example of its application to the Cathedral of Modena (Italy, XII-XIV cent., included in the UNESCO’s World Heritage List) is then presented. In this case, the methodology allowed the identification of the main degradation causes, which found significant confirmation by material diagnostics on the available samples and finite element structural modeling. Thanks to the decay causes identification allowed by the proposed methodology, more effective restoration procedures can be outlined.