Conservation of the Built Heritage: Pilot Site Approach to Design a Sustainable Process

The conservation project of built heritage is a complex process, dealing with an extremely heterogeneous range of elements and different substrates with a large variety of conservation conditions. In recent years, its sustainability has become a relevant issue, due to the general limitation of resources and unique features of cultural heritage assets. The conservation project, therefore, requires a thorough knowledge of the specific characteristics of the site, a reliable evaluation of the treatment’s efficacy and durability, and efficient control of procedures and timing of the site during the conservation activities. A suitable approach to design the intervention is the implementation of a pilot site for the knowledge of surfaces and structures, and for the testing of different operative procedures. This approach needs the collaborative work of a multidisciplinary team coordinated by the project manager. This paper reports on the design of the conservation project of the Renaissance façade of the Monza cathedral, with the development of a pilot site as a relevant example of a complex surface. The three-phase process—preliminary knowledge, testing and implementation of the treatment methodologies, and scale-up to the general conservation project—is described and discussed with significant reference to real data from the case study.