Performance-based assessment of masonry churches: Application to San Clemente Abbey in Castiglione a Casauria (Italy)

The damage assessment of monumental buildings after several seismic events in different countries has systematically highlighted the vulnerability of cultural heritage, in particular churches. In order to reduce their vulnerability with compatible and light interventions, it is necessary to have accurate procedures aimed at guaranteeing an acceptable level of risk for the occupants and for the conservation of the monument itself. This chapter outlines a performance-based assessment procedure for masonry churches that allows the definition of fragility curves, starting from the evaluation of the nonlinear response of each macroelement, after the estimation of the seismic actions distribution with a linear analysis carried out on a finite element model of the whole church. To illustrate the procedure, the chapter describes its application to the Abbey of San Clemente in Castiglione a Casauria (Pescara, Italy), an important monument hit by the L’Aquila earthquake, 2009, and restored in 2011.