The development of efficient preventive and planned maintenance’s plans, about ‘coherent groups’ of built Heritage (castles, villas, churches, monumental cemeteries, etc.), is becoming increasingly necessary. Ecclesiastic Heritage represents a large share of built cultural assets, that shows a growing difficulty of management, because of the substantial number of oratories, chapels, parish churches, widespread on Italian territory and the inadequate available resources. They belong to the ‘minor’ cultural heritage, the most weak category in term of preservation: they have less visibility and possibility to receive public funding. In contrast to civil architecture, both popular (hamlets, rural villages) and noble (castles, villas), the ecclesiastical built Heritage cannot often easily be reused with another destination and this could lead to a scarcity of interest in it. Monumental cemeteries also are at risk, because they present critical situations like the lack of heirs, who take care of graves, and employees not adequately educated in order to improve maintenance and preservation. However, their relation with historical, artistic and religious routes permits their valorisation. At last, if the lack of adequate funding does not facilitate restorations, the development of guidelines and the fulfilment of recommendations of maintenance represent a sustainable approach to the preservation of a large part of architectural heritage, reducing management costs and maintaining constant buildings performances.

The development of efficient preventive and planned maintenance’s plans, about ‘coherent groups’ of built Heritage (castles, villas, churches, monumental cemeteries, etc.), is becoming increasingly necessary. Ecclesiastic Heritage represents a large share of built cultural assets, that shows a growing difficulty of management, because of the substantial number of oratories, chapels, parish churches, widespread on Italian territory and the inadequate available resources. They belong to the ‘minor’ cultural heritage, the most weak category in term of preservation: they have less visibility and possibility to receive public funding. In contrast to civil architecture, both popular (hamlets, rural villages) and noble (castles, villas), the ecclesiastical built Heritage cannot often easily be reused with another destination and this could lead to a scarcity of interest in it. Monumental cemeteries also are at risk, because they present critical situations like the lack of heirs, who take care of graves, and employees not adequately educated in order to improve maintenance and preservation. However, their relation with historical, artistic and religious routes permits their valorisation. At last, if the lack of adequate funding does not facilitate restorations, the development of guidelines and the fulfilment of recommendations of maintenance represent a sustainable approach to the preservation of a large part o architectural heritage, reducing management costs and maintaining constant buildings performances.

The Diocese of Milan offers the opportunity to observe the dynamics and processes of conservation and maintenance ongoing in the churches and parish buildings of the diocesan area. The Diocese covers 4234 square kilometers, including 447 municipalities in seven provinces. This area forms a unique asset, due to the huge number of religious buildings subject to a single authority, the Bishop. Considering only the churches, there are approximately 2500 in the area classed as “cultur-al heritage” under Italian law as they are more than 70 years old; this number does not include rectories, oratories, schools, outbuildings or any other reli-gious properties. The central Diocesan structure is both a reference point for any individu-al restoration work and a higher authority supporting each Parish in planning maintenance activities, for example by providing tools such as the “Technical Dossier of the Building” and the “Maintenance Plan”. The valorization of the religious building heritage is another point of in-terest for the Diocese of Milan, which has recently joined the “Church cen-sus” project promoted by the CEI (Italian Bishops’ Conference), whose objective is to create a national database comprehensive of records on all the churches in Italy. This Census will provide two types of information; the first only available to individual dioceses, offering complete records on each build-ing, such as conservation conditions and action taken in the past, the second, which is a shorter description available to all who promote awareness and valorise the churches’ heritage.

L’Acquedotto storico di Genova è un monumento di innegabile importanza sia dal punto di vista storico sia da quello urbanistico, con la sua imponente lunghezza di circa 40 chilometri che si snoda lungo la Val bisagno fino a raggiungere il cuore della città. Fu utilizzato per l’approvigionamento di acqua a partire dal Medioevo (esistono resti di un acquedotto romano su un tracciato leggermente diverso) fino alla metà del XX secolo, ancora adesso il primo tratto è mantenuto in funzione per usi connessi alla manutenzone dei nuovi impianti. È quindi facile immaginare come durante un così vasto periodo d’uso esso possa essere stato oggetto di migliorie, adattamenti alla crescente domanda d’acqua, riparazioni e vari interventi di manutenzione. Tracce di tali interventi possono essere reperibili nella vasta bibliografia e nei documenti d’archivio che trattano l’Acquedotto, ma sono visibili anche ad un attento studio della materia che costituisce il monumento: per questo è molto importante che la necessaria manutenzione venga svolta in modo da preservare e proteggere quanto più possibile sia le tracce delle trasformazioni sia i materiali diversi e le tecniche che si sono succeduti nel tempo.

Although the conservation of material consistency remains the primary goal of cultural heritage management, now there is a growing awareness that it is not a sufficient condition. Indeed, the valorisation of architecture, i.e. its effective cultural enjoyment, requires that it could be physically utilized by users, thus it should respond to changing needs. The need to keep buildings in use often involve the definition of new functions and of adaptation interventions; however, these must not conflict with the historic character of buildings. The impact on historic buildings is strongly dependent on the choice of the intended use: indeed the amount of people in the building, and particular needs of plant integration or adaptation to current functional and safety standards can result in immediate significant alterations and over time they can promote the progress of decay both of the building, and of the movable property therein located. In the meta-design phase, it is therefore important to define models for the impact of alternative intervention and utilization scenarios. These models could be used to aid in selecting the scenarios most compatible with the preservation of historical, cultural and material features of buildings, through the aware prediction of possible damages. In this framework the research unit is starting up a multi-disciplinary study applied to the case of the historic buildings of the University of Pavia. This research is aimed at the development of a useful tool for evaluating the impact of preservation and valorisation works, in order to promote sustainable management, implemented through the approach of predictive maintenance and planned conservation.

This paper wants to show how you can approach the themes of knowledge, of the valorisation and of the conservation of a ancient manufacture, very wide and so well engaged in the landscape that it seems to merge with it. For this work cooperated many different organizations, as Iscum, Fondazione Amga, Regione Liguria, Provincia di Genova, Comune di Genova, Direzione Regionale Beni Culturali e Paesaggistici della Liguria and University, and together in the last few years they carried out an important work of activation of resources and people for the " Valorisation, promotion and preservation of the Ancient Aqueduct ". In this field Iscum carried out a work of cataloguing of the manufacture with different aim: the predisposition of the ICCD files, the gathering of data about the material and the deterioration of the individual stretch of the Aqueduct and the comparison with what is known in literature. From these data systematically gathered you could clarify different aspects of the constructive history of the manufacture and of the mechanism of its deterioration. At this point it's possible to set a program of conservation, which gives us some criteria to minimize the intervention and maximize the compatibility of them. We are talking about creating an operating manual for the site which will illustrate the various methodologies of intervention for the extraordinary and ordinary repairs compatible with the preservation and conservation of the Ancient Aqueduct.

In the after-earthquake management of an archaeological site, among the most compelling operations to carry out there are the projects concerning with the provisional and safety works addressed to those elements that risk to collapse. In this context we are in need of disposing of a planned maintenance project - written before the earthquake - that allows to plan the interventions to do in respect of the material and structure of the asset to protect, though we are aware of working in very difficult situations, characterized by a real seismic risk. Years by years the protection works could lead to high risk standards: the possibility - or paradox - to plan a maintenance project not addressed to the protected assets but just to the provisional works. In the article we will analyse the possible consequences deriving from a change of prospect like that and we will also take into consideration the potential relapses related to our choice of preserving he archaeological assets. Moreover we will take into account the necessity of training the technicians in charge of the control and inspection in the archaeological sites, together with the analysis of the drafting of a planned maintenance project dinamico that includes the two requests: the preservation of archaeological assets on one side and their safety on the other.

The Italian artistic and historical buildings constitute an architectural heritage to be preserved and valued. Among them, the Venetian Villas deserve a special attention as they represent an authentic, unitary and diffused “territorial system” reflecting the Venetian farming economy during the 16th-18th centuries. The opening words of the “Cultural and landscape Property Code” contain an important principle which - in many respects - renders the right interpretation to the definitions of cultural heritage preservation and enhancement. According to the 1st article, amended by the Legislative Decree n. 62 of year 2008, the activities concerning the heritage conservation, use and enhancement shall be performed in accordance with the applicable regulations, with the aim of emphasizing the presence of a Gordian knot behind the various subjects. In other words, the respect of such regulations becomes a necessary condition for performing all the possible and compatible activities of heritage management, use and enhancement. This section is aiming to describe and define, with the help of practical examples in compliance with current norms, some enhancement instruments guaranteeing the establishment of a dynamic and never static or binding protection able to convert the cultural heritage into an economic resource, and in the meantime promote a correct and necessary requalification.