Monuments built of marble and limestone, such as the Colosseum in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens, will also suffer due to increased temperature fluctuations that cause such materials to expand and contract, causing fractures and breakage. Central Europe, southern Spain and Greece will be the areas most affected due to the drier climate and rising temperatures, the study says.

Even more recent monuments like the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889, could face trouble as the study predicts warm weather and pollution will increase corrosion of metals in northern Europe.

Researchers said problems caused by rain, salt crystallization and thermal stress are already known to conservation experts. For example, the baroque facades and statues of the southern Italian town of Lecce, carved in soft stone, have long been eroded and damaged by rain, pollution and salt.

But the study indicates these threats will move to areas where they were previously unheard of, said Joseph King, an official with the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, a U.N.-backed intergovernmental organization based in Rome.

"Climate change touches a lot of things, and cultural heritage is among them," said King, a conservation expert who did not take part in the EU study. "The problems we are going to have are the same ones we have now. The difference is in the intensity and where they are going to occur."

Not all the study's predictions are negative. Glass corrosion is expected to decrease across Europe, and reduced moisture will help bricks in historical buildings stay dry.

Sabbioni warned the effects could ultimately be even worse because the climate model used for the study was a "moderately optimistic" one chosen from among those used by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The agency issued a spate of reports this year, drawing on the studies of some 2,500 scientists, which predict grim consequences of global warming if swift action is not taken.

Although no specific research was done on single monuments, the maps produced by the $1.6 million "Noah's Ark" study on climate change and cultural heritage can help policymakers plan conservation efforts based on which risk factors threaten their area, Sabbioni said.

The study offers guidelines to help limit the effect of climate change on monuments, from increasing the frequency of repairs to installing barriers on buildings to reduce salt deposits.

Researchers didn't produce an estimate of the cost of climate change on cultural conservation, but the study says that, ultimately, Europe may have to accept some losses.

"Priorities will have to be established," Sabbioni said. "We cannot hope that everything will last forever."

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On the Net: Noah's Ark project: noahsark.isac.cnr.it/