Bell towers of Lima’s Cathedral: An architectural-engineering combined seismic study

This paper focuses on the seismic evaluation of the Bell Towers of Lima’s Cathedral. The church, which dates back to 1535, has been modified and reconstructed several times over the centuries, changing its structural assembly in terms of lightening and strengthening. Focusing on the massive 45 m tall towers, linear kinematic analyses have been performed in order to evaluate their vulnerability. The results show how its actual performance is far below the safety requirements of the Peruvian code. Such code, however, lacks of regulations aimed at increasing structural safety of existing buildings and, thus, it does not provide any reference on the minimum safety level to reach on a monumental construction such as the Cathedral. A simple intervention using steel ties has been proposed in order to increase such performance on nearly all the considered collapse mechanisms, however the reference value of structural safety, due to absence of other prescription, has been set as the ultimate limit state for new constructions.