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It is my profession to make fresco’s and teach the technique. Fresco’s are not made much these days, the technique as well as the knowledge how to make one has almost extincted. Fresco is plasterwork. The plasterwork is painted while still wet. After this painting, the plasterwork dries and petrifies. We are talking about paintings of stone.
The nature of fresco’s is that they get a `transparent look’, a very thin layer of stone covers the painting during the eight weeks it takes to petrify, and will fixate the colors. No other technique can reach this soft look.
A fresco is not really what one would call `art’ in that sense that it dates from times in which the notion of `art’ did not exist yet. Nowadays it’s better to call fresco’s `public art’; paintings which are totally adapted to their contexts, the nature of the building, the environment, and/or to existing programs or schemes. To give you an impression of how one should think of fresco’s: it belongs to the building, just as the tiles in the kitchen belong to the building; on the other hand, fresco’s belong to art in giving their contexts a totally new or different turn (the best example is the Sistine Chapel, which used to be a military building).
Fresco’s can be applied wherever plasterwork can be applied. It needs to be applied to a wall, but it is of no importance whether there are e.g. any windows in this wall – that’s part of the context.
Also, it seems important to mention that fresco’s are made of environmentally friendly materials only: sand, lime, minerals and water. They are sun and waterproof and need no maintenance at all.
