Italian energy policy has determined important keystones in building energy efficiency regulations and their application throughout the country. However, there is still much work to be done in order to make sustainable societies and territories, especially in historical contexts that have the greatest potentiality of energy saving. In detail, in the framework of conservation, restoration, refurbishment, and retrofit actions, the debate among scientists, administrators and skilled people is still open due to the many aspects yet to be considered and solved. In this paper, the state of the art of Italian residential building heritage has been reviewed, while energy retrofit issues and viable solutions have been investigated by collecting literature examples and experiences, focusing on common retrofit measures on historical buildings per thematic area. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of each action have been discussed. Anyway, two main aspects have to be solved yet: the high Payback Times and the restriction about Renewable Energy Sources installation on this kind of buildings. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.