a b s t r a c tIn recent years, energy efficiency and thermal comfort in historic buildings have become high-interest topics among scholars. Research has demonstrated that retrofitting buildings to current energy efficiency and thermal comfort standards is essential for improving sustainability and energy performance and for maintaining built heritage of historic structures. This study is an extensive overview of the literature surrounding this topic. This paper summarizes the different methods and techniques that have been used around the world to achieve performance refurbishments. Articles are organized based on the different building types used as case studies (residential, religious, academic and palace, museums, libraries and theaters, urban areas, and others). The results reveal that residential, religious and museum building types, especially from the last two centuries, have been most often used as case studies. Moreover, Europe, particularly Italy, is leading the research. The aim of this note is to demonstrate the feasibility of maintaining built heritage values of historic buildings while achieving significant improvements in their energy efficiency and thermal comfort.

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With attention increasingly shifting toward adaptation and energy upgrade of existing and historic buildings, research on Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) has grown notably in recent years. School buildings are a significant asset to the European building stock and an important field of investigation because of the peculiarities of the end users and the impact of indoor environmental conditions on their health and productivity. Building on recent literature, particularly the method of Povl Ole Fanger, this research presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative study performed to assess the thermal comfort conditions of a primary school located in a historic building in Villar del Arzobispo, Spain. As the study involves six and seven-year-old pupils, appropriate questionnaires for subjective thermal comfort evaluation were defined with the pedagogical support of the teachers, who also took part in the research and helped deliver the surveys to the children. The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Percentage of Dissatisfied (PD) were then calculated for the evaluation of thermal comfort from measurements and questionnaires, for both pupils and teachers, using the classroom as a sample size. The results show a difference between pupils' and teachers' subjective opinions, with the children displaying a higher and more-difficult-to-reach threshold for indoor thermal comfort.

Adaptive reuse of historic buildings as museums is an effective strategy for retaining heritage architectures while achieving environmental sustainability objectives.Building adaptation, retrofitting and preserving optimal environments for artwork and exhibit preservation are inherently complex, multifaceted tasks. However, indoor microclimates do not only affect collections; occupants and visitors must also be considered. The aim of this research is to explore whether artwork preservation constraints in reused historic building affect patrons. The authors thereby promote a more comprehensive approach, combining the objectives of exhibit conservation, preservation of heritage buildings and adequate indoor conditions, particularly thermal comfort. Data was gathered using the Post-Occupancy Evaluation process applied to a case study where a combination of microclimate monitoring and questionnaire surveys was carried out over a 12-month period. Results demonstrate that: i) the existing microclimate did not always provide visitors with adequate thermal conditions, showing dissatisfaction during the cooling season (July-September), with average TSV values ranging from -1.03 to -1.13; ii) TSV and PMV values were significantly divergent throughout the year, with TSV mainly included within the (-1, 0, +1) band and PMV mainly within the (0, -2) band; and iii) questionnaires show that visitor choice of clothing

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