Evaluation of structural safety and seismic vulnerability of historical masonry buildings: studies and applications in the Tuscany Region

Recent earthquakes in Italian regions evidenced the high vulnerability of historical masonry existing buildings: severe damages were revealed in structural and not structural elements with the following loss of lives and of significative examples of the Italian architectural tradition, often requiring a strong financial effort to be carried back to their ancient brightness. The majority of the Italian buildings' heritage is made up of masonry constructions with high architectural, historical and monumental impact, enlarged over the centuries without an organized scheme and consequently characterized by structural and not structural problems often increased by the loss of an accurate maintenance. The Italian Standards for Constructions and the guidelines provided by the Ministry for Infrastructures for the evaluation and reduction of seismic risk on historical heritage pay a lot of attention towards the vulnerability analysis of existing buildings, necessary for the elaboration of a project providing higher level of structural static and seismic safety without deleting the original nature of the building. In the present work, the structural analyses of two historical masonry buildings, Palazzo La Sapienza in Pisa and Palazzo Ducale in Massa are presented.