The restoration of the wooden statue of San Nicola di Mira – usually known as San Nicola di Bari – at the Diocesan Museum of Palermo, is the result of a cooperation among art historians, restorers, physicists, chemists, biologists and geologists. The intervention was carried out by following a series of historical and scientific surveys which allowed to study the object in depth and to recover it its originality. The restoration took place in a hall of the Diocesan Museum, fitted out as a laboratory, according to rigorous scientific rules and to Cesare Brandi’s restorationtheory. So, the statue went back, as far as possible, to its ancient splendour; moreover, some details re-emerged, that had been so far buried under the patinas of the past.