The full knowledge of the morphological evolution of an historical masonry building, defined more as ‘structural aggregate’ than as ‘single construction’, together with the analysis of the architectural, structural, geological and geotechnical aspects, allow the assessment of the static safety and seismic vulnerability of the complex and the design of retrofit interventions. In the present paper, a Knowledge-Based-Approach is applied to the historical building ‘Palazzo La Sapienza’ in Pisa, allowing to provide reliable results concerning the actual structural condition of the building avoiding the strong computational effort usually associated to the execution of refined numerical analyses. In case of complex buildings, characterized by a high heterogeneity of materials, structural typologies, geometries and so on, the adoption of a global model is not always useful to represent the effective structural behaviour. The proposed approach shows how a deep multidisciplinary knowledge of the construction can limit the use of cumbersome numerical modelling and analysis, however reaching reliable and accurate results usable also in the current practice

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The University of Pisa was established in 1343, but it was only in the 16 th century that a specific venue, Palazzo La Sapienza, was built. The building was subjected to various modifications in relation to the users' requirements, with the following irregular structural growth due the absence of a specific and organized global and general scheme. The present paper describes the investigations carried out on the construction and on the foundation soil to clarify their mutual interactions and explain some of the damage today affecting the building. A deep in situ experimental test campaign was executed to define masonry typology, dimensions of structural elements, mechanical properties of materials, geotechnical parameters of the soil and foundations' geometry and masonry characteristics. Dynamic properties of the subsoil were investigated in order to properly define the local seismic action and the local influence of subsoil profile, necessary for the execution of safety assessments on the global model of the building.

Abstract. The evaluation of the structural safety and seismic vulnerability of historical masonry buildings represents one of the most important problems affecting countries, like

Recent earthquakes in Italian regions evidenced the high vulnerability of historical masonry of existing buildings: severe damages were revealed in structural and non-structural elements with the ensuing loss of lives and of significant examples of the Italian architectural tradition, often requiring a strong financial commitment to take them back to their former glory. The majority of Italian building's heritage is made up of masonry constructions with high architectural, historical and monumental impact, enlarged over the centuries without an organized scheme and consequently characterized by structural and non-structural problems often increased by the lack of accurate maintenance. The Italian Standards for Constructions and the guidelines provided by the Ministry for Infrastructures for the evaluation and reduction of seismic risk on historical heritage pays a lot of attention to the vulnerability analysis of existing buildings, necessary for the development of a project to provide a high level of structural static and seismic safety without deleting the original nature of the building. In the present paper, the structural analyses of two historical masonry buildings, Palazzo La Sapienza in Pisa and Palazzo Ducale in Massa are presented.