Ancient masonry cathedrals in Matera landscape: seismic assessment and risk mitigation

Dramatic human and economic consequences are nowadays still resulting from natural and anthropic risks of Cultural Heritage. Matera landscape is characterized by many and important ancient asor athedrals, oetrated i its doto aed  Sassi of Matera, ad reogized as Cultural World Heritage by UNESCO since 1993. The city is located in the southern Italy into a seismic-prone area with moderate seismicity. The structural typology and materials identification of these churches represent a crucial point for their structural safety assessment and risks mitigation. In this paper some representative examples are illustrated by remarking the main peculiarities of such structures. Then, some chosen study cases are evaluated with simplified procedures for seismic risk assessment. This approach may be also used in a territorial scale for planning the preventive conservation of the Cultural Property, in order to establish priorities lists and to plan preventive mitigation projects based on the specific vulnerabilities of the cases under consideration