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The purpose of this paper is to develop and discuss a methodological approach for energy assessment and retrofitting of envelope systems in Mediterranean historical buildings, in order to ensure the desirable balance between improvement requirements and preservation principles.

The methodology is based on the assessment of historical districts at the site, building and component scales, the development of energy models of building-types that are highly representative, in terms of materials, construction techniques, typologies and performances, the identification of intervention priorities and the validation of compatible retrofitting solutions.

The methodology, applied to a representative Adriatic sea town in South Italy, shows the potentialities of innovative materials and technologies (aerogel, PCMs, etc.) as tools to achieve the improvement of the energy performances and the preservation of the original characters. Nevertheless, it shows how the preliminary qualification of the environmental, architectural, constructional and technological characteristics is paramount to support the identification of the current behavior of the building system and the transformation boundaries from the historical values.

The paper proves how assessment and intervention methods and tools, besides effective, compatible, low invasive and durable, should be geocluster oriented and performance based, thus with general reliability for the whole local context and suitable flexibility to be tailored to different specific situations, toward the definition of retrofitting micro-scale measures and macro-scale strategies that are replicable and scalable.