<p>The 24 August 2016 earthquake very heavily struck the central sector of the Apennines among the Lazio,Umbria, Marche and Abruzzi regions, devastating the town of Amatrice, the nearby villages and other localities along the Tronto valley. In this paper we present the results of the macroseismic field survey carried out using the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS) to take the heterogeneity of the building stock into account. We focused on the epicentral area, where geological conditions may also have contributed to the severity of damage. On the whole, we investigated 143 localities; the maximum intensity 10 EMS has been estimated for Amatrice, Pescara del Tronto and some villages in between. The severely damaged area (8-9 EMS) covers a strip trending broadly N-S and extending 15 km in length and 5 km in width; minor damage occurred over an area up to 35 km northward from the epicenter.</p>