The contribution of AI to understand cultural heritage

The Artificial Intelligence & Cultural Heritage (AI & CH) working group was born in 1999 with the aim at promoting various scientific activities to increase a more active collaboration between the sectors of cultural assets and artificial intelligence. The many events (workshops and schools) organized over the years have shown the validity of this group for exchanging ideas and gathering researchers and practitioners from different fields. New applications of informatics and artificial intelligence have provided the opportunity to produce innovative tools for documenting, managing and communicating cultural heritage. For this anniversary we intend to show how some of the most important methods and techniques of artificial intelligence developed in this area, still represent significant tools for preservation, archiving and fruition of cultural heritage. In the following the contributions of Italian researchers involved for several years in projects related to cultural heritage, will be presented.