Conservation of monuments and historic sites is one of the most challenging problems facing modern civilization. It involves various cultural, humanistic, social, technical, economical and administrative factors, intertwining in inextricable patterns. The complexity of the topic is such that guidelines or recommendations for intervention techniques and design approaches are difficult to set.

The Technical Committee on the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites (named TC19) was established by the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) in 1981, is supported by the Italian Geotechnical Society (AGI), and renamed TC301 in 2010. Geotechnics and Heritage, collects relevant case histories on the role of geotechnical engineering in the preservation of monuments and historic sites, and is an addition to the Proceedings of the two International Symposia organized by the Committee in Napoli in 1994 and 2013. The contributions in the book prove the significant role geotechnical engineering plays in conservation of historic building and monuments.

Emilio Bilotta, Alessandro Flora, Stefania Lirer, Carlo Viggiani