Heritage buildings and the precious artworks contained therein, represent inestimable cultural and artistic evidence from the past that must be properly preserved for future generations. In the last decades, climate change has gained relevance and is becoming crucial to assess the building performance under such effect to provide timely mitigation actions to preserve our cultural heritage. In this regard, this paper outlines a method that combines different experimental activities and tools to forecast possible future risks due to climate change for the conservation of the artworks and provide its application in a relevant case study in Italy, the Duomo di Milano. In detail, the suggested method consists of the monitoring of the building indoor climate to validate a simulation model, defining possible future scenarios based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections, and evaluation of the future conservation risks of the main artworks. The results of the analysis carried out, show that for some artworks (e.g., stone sculptures, some organic materials, etc.), the conservation conditions will not worsen compared to the current situation, while for others (e.g., paintings, wooden objects, etc.) the risk of deterioration is expected to increase substantially. This study helps to understand how the future climate can affect the indoor environment of a huge masonry building and allow to plan targeted mitigation strategies aimed to reduce the future risks.

Historic building heating and, in particular, church heating represents a challenging task because many objectives have to be reached simultaneously, such as occupants thermal comfort and optimal internal climate suitable for the preservation of fragile building components and artworks. Moreover, current requirements for sustainability impose to make efforts, where possible, to minimize the amount of energy needed and the consequent environmental impact. Innovative solutions are currently under research and development and are mainly based on electric radiant surfaces. The present work represents actually a detailed performance analysis of a novel hydronic high-efficiency pew-based heating system coupled with a ground-source heat pump. The system was specifically developed for the above-described application field, with particular reference to the Basilica di Collemaggio (L'Aquila, Italy), a church of worldwide relevance currently under restoration. In detail, within the work a three-dimensional CFD analysis of the heating solution was carried out considering as application field a virtual test room containing two benches with three virtual sitting manikins. Heat exchanges between the human body surfaces, the room environment and the heated benches were simulated in order to assess the whole performance. The results show that the air temperature in the room is not significantly influenced by the heating system, but the heat is directly radiated to people, ensuring comfortable conditions and contributing to artworks preservation