A South-East oriented fagade of a protected building of Politecnico di Milano has been retrofitted on its inner surface with respect to energy consumption and thermal comfort. Four prototype solutions including special perlite boards and aerogel composite materials have been used. The analysis envisaged both monitoring by means of temperature, moisture and heat flux sensors at demo scale, and Heat and Moisture Transfer modelling. The study has been carried out before and after retrofit. The present investigation is concerned with the comparison between simulation and measurements. A parametric analysis permitted both the validation of assumptions made for numerical simulations and the identification of the most affecting variables. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.