Structural characterization for the seismic protection of heritage churches

The high vulnerability of ancient masonry churches and their condition of cultural heritage assets make their seismic protection a complex operation. Structural analysis offers valuable support, but requires a realistic modelling of the building structure. Acquiring a thorough knowledge of the building constructional characteristics is, therefore, fundamental and may be achieved combining information from different sources. Besides regular surveying operations and limited diagnostic tests, other tools are available to obtain a detailed picture of the situation. For the case of churches, that often are many centuries old and have evolved with several structural changes during their lifetime, a historical research aimed at the reconstruction of the different phases of the building transformation is extremely useful to point out its characteristics, and possibly its hidden criticalities. A different but equally useful contribution comes from the recently developed high-power software tools for 3D modelling, allowing to visualize the shape of the asset but also to understand in detail its geometry and its building process. The combination of these two very different means offers a deep insight of the building features. Three Italian heritage churches testify here the positive results achieved by a synergic use of different knowledge sources, and in particular with crossing documental information and direct inspection supported by effective representation tools.