The special issue of Natural Product Research dedicated to Cultural Heritage is complete.
The idea of producing such an issue was born starting from the observation that one of the new guidelines adopted by restorers is focused on trying to use natural products in place of synthetic ones when applied to works of art and to precious ancient objects, especially when the properties of the used natural products are known.
Green Chemistry is to day considered a great opportunity of development for Chemistry. By this way the look for natural products able to substitute synthetic ones is in fact one of the options of green chemistry. Sometimes they are already available, but not applied to culture heritage.
The call to collect papers received adequate answer: it was successful, and we have so completed our special issue in a very satisfactory way. We have papers covering all the fields of the Cultural Heritage Chemistry.
A significant part of them is related to what we call the step of the knowledge, the first one always needed before any treatment on an archaeological and artistic object. This knowledge is searched through many experimental techniques with particular attention paid to not destructive and not invasive ones, to be preferred in this specific application field. In this line some contributions concern the proposal of new experimental approaches, representing true advancements for this kind of studies, while some other ones look in the case of researches that were not conclusive at their confirmation or not.
Another group of researches is concerned with the territory and some specific monuments, looking at their protection as first element of cultural and touristic enrichment for the considered local zones.
A third group looks at restoration action so proposing innovative materials and methods for consolidation, starting from nanomaterials and biorestoration.
The successful results obtained suggest to consider with attention the hypothesis of a new special issue in the future, regarding the more recent results obtained in the area of the study of natural products applied to cultural heritage. The Editorial Board will move in this direction.
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