Frescoes painted by 14 century master Giotto have been brought to life under ultraviolet light, revealing the artwork’s long-lost colour and detail.

The researchers stumbled on the ultraviolet technique by accident, after spending four months mapping the frescoes as preparation for a possible future restoration.

In the course of the project, they found that by shining ultraviolet light on the paintings they were able to see much more than was visible to the naked eye.

The frescoes are thought to have been admired by Michelangelo and are said to have influenced his work nearly 200 years later.

The paintings were covered in whitewash in the 18th century and then underwent a brutal restoration in 1840, when the whitewash was removed with the aid of steel wool scrubbers and solvents. The work left the masterpieces faded, scratched and washed out.

Art lovers, however, are unlikely to see the enhanced paintings because permanently bathing them in ultraviolet would damage them.

Restorers hope instead to use the ultraviolet images to build a computer-generated facsimile of the chapel.

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An 18th century canal in south Devon is one step closer to being restored.

The Stover Canal near Newton Abbot was built by James Templer of Stover House to serve the ball clay industry.

In 1999 the Stover Canal Society was formed with the intention of restoring the scrub-filled waterway for fishing, rowing and wildlife.

Teignbridge District Council has now sub-leased the land to the Stover Canal Trust, paving the way for full restoration plans to be drawn up.

The trust includes representatives from the canal society, local councils and other interested parties.

For more than a century the canal transported clay and minerals from the Bovey Basin and granite from quarries on Dartmoor.

The granite trade was relatively short-lived, lasting less than 40 years, but the canal continued to serve the clay industry until 1937.

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The tragic collapse of a centuries-old minaret in Morocco, which killed 41 people, has prompted an examination of other old mosques.

There has been public criticism of the apparent lack of maintenance of the minaret.

Following the urgent appraisal of old mosques ordered by King Mohammed, “the necessary measures will be taken”, the interior ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

Earlier, the king had ordered the reconstruction of the Meknes minaret “keeping to its original form.”

The government is investigating the cause of Friday’s collapse. Meknes is on Unesco’s world heritage list.

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A project underway to restore the Everglades is threatening to destroy historic sites.

Multibillion-dollar plans to recreate once-natural water flows to the Everglades involve building massive reservoirs and filter marshes across hundreds of thousands of acres south of Lake Okeechobee.

But saving an environmental treasure threatens to trample sacred ground. Some of the land identified for restoration includes historic sites where South Florida’s earliest Native American inhabitants lived and buried their dead.

An infusion of federal money has been a shot in the arm for long-stalled Everglades restoration construction. Now South Florida’s tribes and other advocates for preserving historic sites are calling for caution as construction plans spread to more land.

Saving what remains of the Everglades shouldn’t mean disturbing what remains of some of the Everglades’ earliest human inhabitants, said archaeologist Bob Carr, executive director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy in Davie.

“Our mission is to preserve as many of the sites as possible in South Florida,” Carr said. “We are not convinced that destroying them is a necessity of restoration.”

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Restoration work has begun on the Thirumalai Naicker Palace, a 17th century building in India.

The Archaeological Survey of India has taken up preliminary work to restore an intact 17th century palace in south Tamil Nadu, the Thirumalai Naicker Palace, in this temple town. The ASI has also recommended that the palace be included in the tentative list of UNESCO’s world heritage sites.

The Srivilliputhur palace was declared a protected monument in 1921, but since the local district courts were functioning in the palace, it could not be reclaimed till the courts vacated the premises. The palace is spread over 15,000 sq.ft. and has two halls — the bigger one about 3,600 sq. ft and a smaller one of approximately 2,100 sq.ft and a few smaller rooms.

The ASI is investigating literature from 1623 to find any reference to the palace. A seal of the Queen on the ceiling of the main hall names the place as “Thirumal Naik’s Hall, Srivilliputhur Taluk Cutchery. Decorated in the jubilee year 1887 – of Her Most Gracious Majesty, Victoria, The Empress of India.” A second English writing, of a much later era, commemorates the death of eight persons from the village in World War 1: “From this village 52 men went to the Great War 1914-1919. Of those 8 gave up their lives.”

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