Microclimatic monitoring for book heritage preservation in historic buildings: preliminary investigation on “Sala del Dottorato” in Palazzo Murena, Perugia, Italy

Abstract

In order to ensure the proper conservation of the book heritage, the hygrothermal conditions of the rooms where the books are stored must respect precise ranges of temperature and relative humidity. The paper deals with the study and the optimization of the conservation conditions of the book heritage in historic buildings by a case study, namely “Sala del Dottorato”. This room is one of the University of Perugia most exquisite rooms, because of its decorations and the presence of rare and ancient books (27 incunabula; the oldest piece of the collection is an edition of St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, printed in 1470). The room is located on the first floor of Palazzo Murena and it was originally the monastery library. From the Sixties and up to a few years ago, the room hosted the discussions of PhD final thesis, while now is used to host the most representative meetings of the University. This involves the presence of a significant number of people for a brief period of time, causing the alteration of the environmental parameters. The present study was carried out by an experimental campaign (temperature, relative humidity, CO2) aimed to understand the microclimatic critical issues in order to develop a permanent monitoring system; this system should notify when the microclimatic conditions are out of the range for conservation and people comfort, giving information about the possible actions to restore the correct environmental conditions.