The Database of the Ornamental Stones of Piemonte (NW Italy) Hosted on a WebGIS Service.

In Piemonte (north-western Italy), an intense extraction activity of ornamental stones widely used for historical buildings, developed throughout centuries. This is due to the wide geodiversity of the region, characterised by mostly metamorphic and magmatic rocks in the Western Alps and by terrigenous and carbonate sedimentary rocks in the Alps-Apennines syn-orogenic basins. The work presents the description and classification of the main Piemonte ornamental stones, referring to a simplified lithological Map Legend. To enhance the remarkable historical and contemporary stone heritage of the region a database (DB) was developed addressing a proper cataloguing of the ornamental stones and related quarries. The classified instances have been referred to the geologic units of a regional-scale, interactive geological map, in which each ornamental stone was attributed to few geo-lithological classes. The map was developed as a WebGIS service hosted on a geoportal () that allows interactive querying and download of the DB information, regarding the main rock types and the corresponding quarries, as well as their historical-architectural uses, to underline their value as witness of cultural heritage. The WebGIS service is progressively fed by new data, in order to become a relevant source of information for those working in the field of cultural heritage and geo-environmental sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]