The crumbling of historical sites due to the formation of detrimental salt crusts is now a very real problem in the urban environment. The BIOBRUSH project is a consortium of six partners from across Europe who are combining their expertise to help address these problems. The scientific objectives of BIOBRUSH are to devise an effective, safe, environment-friendly biotechnological tool based on bioremediation. BIOBRUSH aims to use microorganisms for both restoration and conservation of stonework in a technology that can be incorporated into existing conservation strategies for the European heritage.