The Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), www.itam.cas.cz, is the largest research institution in the Czech Republic organized as a set of public research institutes as independent legal bodies. The Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM) carries out interdisciplinary research in the field of Heritage Science. It has been supported under FP5 INCO Programme as European Centre of Excellence for interdisciplinary Cultural Heritage (CH) research projects – “ARCCHIP” since 1999. It operates since 2013 a new European Centre of Excellence for CH research in the World Heritage City of Telč (CET), which has been built under the ERDF.
The research portfolio of ITAM involves projects with themes from technical and natural sciences through socio-economic research till art conservation. The ITAM team has been involved in 24 projects supported by the EC (FP5-FP7), Council of Europe and international programmes. Next to specific stationary laboratories (radiography, combined climatic wind tunnel, set of laboratories for physics, chemistry, biology), a group for complex investigations in historic environment, with a mobile laboratory for diagnostics of historic materials and structures is available as well as several long-term monitoring networks (corrosion, mechanical response including measurement weather and dynamic effects) with relevant database systems.