Building features and safeguard of church towers in Basilicata (Southern Italy)

The paper deals with an ongoing research activity that is centered on the knowledge of the dynamic properties of a special typology of monuments, the church towers. To acquaint the readers with the overall methodological approach that will be followed to reach the fixed purposes, the work presents the results of both experimental surveys and numerical modeling of the bell-tower of San Gerardo Cathedral in Potenza, the chief-town of Basilicata (Southern Italy) characterized by high seismic hazard. Staring from an overview of the site historical seismicity and damage suffered by the town, the paper goes through the core of the work all the once, delineating the ambient noise measure-ments and Finite Element (FE) model used to estimate the frequencies of both the monuments and the soil. The authors, gaining benefit from these approaches, examine comparatively the re-sults of the in situ investigations and numerical model. Finally, considerations about the soil-structure resonance are made.