In this research the thermal stability of paper and its components are investigated, in order to evaluate the effect of the artificial weathering treatments, carrying on measurements of thermal gravimetry; also some SEM observations are performed to follow the degradative phenomena. Our work allowed to correlate the level of degradation of the artificially aged paper samples with that of the naturally aged ones. TGA curves of the weathered samples show changes in respect to the starting materials; particularly, the chemical oxidation appears as the most degradative action in respect to the other physical treatments. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.