This paper focuses on the autograph Treatise On Land Surveying Methods Using the Surveyor s Cross found at the Biblioteca Umanistica dell’Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo (Carlo Bo Urbino University Humanistic Library). The treatise was for many years erroneously included among the writings of the Urbino mathematician Muzio Oddi (1569-1639), author of Dello Squadro (On Land Surveying Methods Using the Surveyor s Cross) of 1625, but through careful bibliographic research has now been attributed to the civil and military architect Francesco Paciotti, (1521-1591). Paciotti s important knowledge of mathematics and geometry applied to the erection of fortifications and land measurement was essential, too, in the design of an innovative kind of surveyor s cross, which was able to provide more accurate topographic measurements and land surveys. Paciotti extolled the tool as being essential for architecture, and almost certainly used it to build the Citadel of Turin, which provided the model for the construction of all other European citadels and fortresses. Paciotti s treatise provides the restorer with a wealth of knowledge on the materials and executive technique used to manufacture the tool.

This paper focuses on the mortars from the facades of the Villa Reale di Marlia located about 10 km N-NE of the city centre of Lucca (northern Tuscany, Italy). It is a complex of historic buildings built during different constructive phases and embellished with beautiful gardens and botanic rarities, which are protected by high walls. Based on several petrographic analyses the study has allowed us to reconstruct the evolution of the colours of the villa s facades from the transformation project of Elisa Baciocchi to that of Maria Luisa di Borbone, up to the great intervention of recovery of the Pecci Blunt accounts in the twenties-thirties of the twentieth century.

In 18th century obstetrics became a special branch of medicine, with a corpus of physiological and practical knowledge sufficient to improve the outcome of childbearing. The same period also saw the emergence of new techniques and the development of instruments that would later come into widespread use, such as the forceps, as well as the first production of teaching models to provide surgery students and midwives with three-dimensional illustrations of the anatomy of the pregnant woman, the physiology of childbearing, and potential complications. Some obstetrical wax models, that can be considered makeshifts of measurements in medicine, are illustrated. They are exposed, in number of twenty-one, in the Galileo Museum of Florence and were commissioned, around 1770, by Felice Fontana, who was working on the installation of the Museum of Physics and Natural History of Florence, from the sculptor Giuseppe Ferrini and his assistant Clemente Susini. The anatomical models contributed, in a context in which the measurement was not easy to be taken in situ, to formalize medical knowledge, strictly tied, in the past, to the various communities, that had different ideas about the causes of and cures for suffering, illness and disease. As a matter of facts, instead of being based on objective parameters, medical knowledge was based often on spiritual beliefs as well as practical therapies and techniques. Keywords - anatomical models, obstetrics, history of medicine, didactics

The archaeometric study of several mortar samples of the Pisa s Cathedral apse allows us to identify eight types of aerial and hydraulic binding materials, containing cocciopesto, fluvial sand, pozzolana, calcarenite and marble in various proportions bound by both aerial and hydraulic lime. The binder fraction is dirty snow-white in colour, with inhomogeneous structure due to the presence of millimetric lumps, in the cases in which only aerial lime is present and more or less whitish, reddish, pinkish or brownish in colour when binder is showing an hydraulic character.

Mechatronic survey has becoming a topic of great interest because of the importance for the sustainability, management and preservation of heritage and historical assets. In fact, the main concerns refer to the accessibility of the sites to inspect and invasiveness of the investigation, which are very often time consuming and high-cost due to security issues. In this paper, we discuss a mechatronic solution for the survey based on a mobile robotic platform, on which equipment and sensors are installed to perform automatic or semi-automatic survey. In this regard, a suitable simulation of the operation is very useful for training and verification of the robot motion capabilities. Simulation tests are reported for the robot carrying equipment, together with experimental tests. The developed solution may be used for indoor or outdoor inspections.