ASSESSMENT OF THE SAN MARCO CHURCH STRUCTURAL BEHAVIOR IN SEQUENCE OF THE APRIL 2009 EARTHQUAKE IN ABRUZZO (ITALY)

The scope of this paper is to understand the structural causes behind the almost complete collapse of the 13th century Church of San Marco, situated in the historical centre of L???Aquila, during the April 2009 earthquake. This will be achieved through the application of a 2nd level of knowledge evaluation methodology speci???fic for this particular class of historical buildings (complex religious buildings in post seismic sceneries). The paper presents the conclusions withdrawn from the preliminary analysis, which consists on the following 3 phases: (i) historical investigation;?? (ii) description of the building;?? (iii) survey and description of the existent damage on the structure. In addition are also presented the results of a simpli???fied limit analysis, using the software c-­Sisma [9] and [10], performed to some structural elements and collapse mechanisms considered as dominant on the church behavior and individuated based on the previous gathered information. Finally will be presented and described an Automatic Monitoring System installed on the church along with some of its initial results. This type of system is useful to access the safety conditions of the structure in time, and guide more accurately the intervention process. The knowledge attained form this type of studies is of great interest and importance, in particular for the entities that control the preservation of the built heritage, because it helps to prevents future errors and allows the de???finition of more ef???ficient intervention strategies, so important for the preservation of this type of buildings in the case of another seismic event.