Conservation

Hi, Biennale Crowd: did you know Venice is dying for these six reasons?

What you can do despite too many cruise ships, rising sea level and with no one in charge

Napoléon drowned, beheaded and restored

Treatment of emperor’s statue may resolve conflicting accounts of its history

Backlash over claim that Egyptian geese were cooked up in 1800s

Museum director and former antiquities minister refute Italian archaeologist’s theory

Pompeian frescoes cured with antibiotics

Bacteria removed from Villa of the Mysteries frieze during restoration

Grand designs on Soane’s London home

Visitors can see the architect’s newly restored living quarters for the first time in 160 years

Leonardo’s muse keeps her secrets as portrait returns to Milan

Thinning the painting’s varnish reveals La Belle Ferronnière's fine features, but French experts unable to confirm her identity

Ancestral home of the last Knight of Glin for sale

Restored with passion by Desmond FitzGerald, co-founder of the Irish Georgian society, it is on the market at €6.5m, contents extra

Research puts Goya’s witches in right order

"Feat in forensics” finally establishes correct sequence of artist's private album

Armenian churches in Turkey and Cyprus win awards for conservation and community reconciliation

Winners of Europa Nostra prize include Stonehenge visitor centre and virtual museum of St Mark's in Venice

Cultural heritage at heart of propaganda battle in Iraq

Following vandalism at Mosul museum and Nergal Gate, Iraqi government says IS has destroyed ancient sites at Nimrud, Hatra and Khorsabad

Vatican begins final work on Raphael rooms

The work may make it possible to identify which parts of the frescoes were painted by Giulio Romano, Raphael’s most trusted apprentice

Reims repairs its war damage, a century on

Restoration of the cathedral is due to be completed in 2015

Fixing - or not fixing - the works in Berlin's sculpture collections damaged in 1945

Should they be left as a reminder of a dark past or restored to reflect the artists’ intentions?

Tate finds 370-year-old bullet hole in Charles I statue

The sculpture was famously attacked by Parliamentarians shortly after the outbreak of the English Civil War

Newsarchive

Syrian war’s devastating toll on antiquities

Unesco places major national heritage sites on danger list as ground combat, air strikes and looting reduce ancient settlements to rubble

Conservators save Burden’s war from brink

Breathing new life into the installation that the American artist wanted to destroy

Booksarchive

Books: Raphael—all things to all ages

Three new monographs show the artist is still the equal of Leonardo and Michelangelo, if not so popular

Why art conservation needs to be left to the experts

A Spanish grandmother’s handiwork recently made headlines, but Ajax and rainstorms have contributed to other botched treatments by amateurs

Newsarchive

Restored 18th century parlour from Connecticut open for public viewing at Yale University Art Gallery

Yale prepares for the 2012 installation of its decorative arts galleries by reconstructing a period room

Land Art: here today, gone tomorrow?

Major installations in the American West by artists such as Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer could soon disappear

Cambodiaarchive

The Cambodian World Heritage site, Angkor Wat, is finally being restored

An ongoing effort to restore the ancient site has international teams working altogether but using radically different approaches, resulting in unexpected order

MoMA and Guggenheim join forces for Reinhardt restoration

The conservation departments of both museums are collaborating on the study, analysis, and treatment of a badly damaged painting

Battle to save Joseph Beuys wallcovering at Landesmuseum

Debate over whether it constitutes part of the original “Block Beuys” installation

The Parthenon Marbles and cultural politics: What are we really all talking about?

At a major conference held on 30 November and 1 December 1999, British Museum, Greek and international scholars discussed the nature of any damage to the Marbles in the hushed-up cleaning of the 1930s. Mary Beard puts the discussions in context and tells how, ever since their acquisition in 1816 by Lord Elgin, the Marbles have aroused fierce debate. Why?