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© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/ publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Chemistry plays a multi-faceted role in understanding, protecting and transmitting the legacy of physical artefacts we inherited from past generations. Chemists are called to contribute to solving some of the challenges that face heritage today, from the composition and structure of heritage materials—information from whom provenance, period of creation, manufacturing technology and art techniques could be inferred—to preserving, protecting and securing artefacts against natural catastrophes and man-made disasters. The tremendous developments in chemical imaging in the last decades and advances in the analytical capabilities of spectroscopic & chromatographic methods, the potential of nanotechnologies and nanomaterials to enormously improve the traditional conservation and restoration methods and to contribute to the development of new diagnostic methods as well as the increased availability and popularity of portable non-invasive instrumentation have catalyzed innovation in the research of cultural heritage and provided new solutions and perspectives in its documentation, interpretation and cultural uses. Besides, the new cross-disciplinary vision encompassing chemistry, conservation science, archaeological science, bioarcheology, environmental science, physical and engineering sciences, and ICT enables the establishment of new relationships between cultural heritage and its meaning, history, value, significance, composition, conservation and enjoyment. This helps fostering the role of cultural heritage as a key factor for better understanding our history, traditions and culture, an instrument of cohesion of our diversified community, and not least an element of individual and social wellbeing. It is within this context that the EuChemS Working Party on Chemistry for Cultural Heritage (ChemCH) initiated in 2010 the International Congress “Chemistry for Cultural Heritage” with the aim of developing relationships across all disciplines relating to chemical science and cultural heritage and across all sectors—academic, business, educational, communications and policy—and helping to put the right people “in the same room”. Since then, the ChemCH congress is organized every other year. The 5th edition of the congress, ChemCH 2018, was held from 3 to 7 July, 2018, at the Central University Library of Bucharest, Romania. The congress was organized by the Romanian Association “Science and Cultural Heritage in Connection” in collaboration with National Research & Development Institute for Textiles and Leather through its Advanced Research for Cultural Heritage (ARCH Lab) Group and National Museum of Romanian Literature, under the auspices of the Romanian Chemical Society. The event chaired by Dr. Elena Badea and her team received the patronage of the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation. After successful editions in Ravenna, Italy (2010), Istanbul, Turkey (2012), Vienna, Austria (2014) and Bruxelles, Belgium (2016), this time Bucharest gathered 165 participants, renowned scientists, leading experts in a wide range of chemistry fields as well as young researchers from 19 European countries, China, USA, Singapore, Mexico, Iran and Egypt, extending both the thematic and geographical span. It is worth noting that 62% of the participants came from the academic (35%) and research (27%) institutions, while 34% of the participants were professionals from museums, libraries, archives (28%) and private conservation laboratories (6%). The participants from various national public institutions accounted Open Access