Urban Transport Vibrations and Cultural Heritage Sites in Rome: The Cases of the Temple of Minerva Medica and of the Catacomb of Priscilla

Abstract

The coexistence of modern transport systems with the presence of cultural heritage sites in urban environments is a very crucial issue in sustainable city planning. In particular, in the historic centre of cities with plenty of scattered archaeological sites, such as Rome, urban traffic vibrations must be monitored to assure the conservation of ancient monuments. In fact, cultural heritage sites may suffer from traffic vibration impact in terms of aesthetical damages even in cases in which the structural health is not compromised. In such context, the present paper focuses on the impact of traffic vibrations induced on two monuments studied within the CO.B.RA. project (aiming at developing advanced technologies and methods for the conservation of cultural heritage). The so-called Temple of Minerva Medica and the Catacomb of Priscilla are exposed to different types of traffic vibration sources and are characterized by different structural conditions. Besides the ambient vibration monitoring, several non-destructive tests (NDTs) and noncontact investigations were conducted at the two sites in order to study the state of damage and the structural conditions of the two monuments. In particular, the ambient vibration monitoring gave remarkably different outcomes in these two cases and provided objective data for interesting observations on the sustainability of tramways, railways and road traffic near such diverse archaeological assets.

Ambient Vibrations of Age-old Masonry Towers: Results of Long-term Dynamic Monitoring in the Historic Centre of Lucca

“…With regard to the world's architectural heritage and monuments, the first examples of dynamic monitoring through ambient vibrations for damage detection purposes date back to (Gentile and Saisi, 2007), and (Ramos et al, 2010). A great deal of effort has been made to study the effects of traffic on ancient monuments, noteworthy amongst which is the work of (Pau and Vestroni, 2008) and (Bongiovanni et al, 2017) on dynamic characterization of the Colosseum, (Roselli et al, 2017) on other monuments in Rome, (Chiostrini et al, 1995), (Lacanna et al, 2016) and (Lacanna et al, 2019) in the historic centre of Florence, and (Erkal, 2017) The present paper is aimed at investigating the dynamic behaviour of a medieval tower located in a historic centre and subjected to vibrations from the surrounding environment, the main goals being: to characterize the main sources of vibration, the trend of the tower's dynamic properties over time, and the tower's response to the activities in the historic centre. To this end, we rely on a dataset obtained from five months of continuous measurements (November 2017 to March 2018) on the socalled "Torre delle Ore" (henceforth Clock Tower) in the historic centre of Lucca.…”

“…With regard to the world's architectural heritage and monuments, the first examples of dynamic monitoring through ambient vibrations for damage detection purposes date back to (Gentile and Saisi, 2007), and (Ramos et al, 2010). A great deal of effort has been made to study the effects of traffic on ancient monuments, noteworthy amongst which is the work of (Pau and Vestroni, 2008) and (Bongiovanni et al, 2017) on dynamic characterization of the Colosseum, (Roselli et al, 2017) on other monuments in Rome, (Chiostrini et al, 1995), (Lacanna et al, 2016) and (Lacanna et al, 2019) in the historic centre of Florence, and (Erkal, 2017) on the traffic-induced vibrations on a minaret in Turkey. The availability of large datasets yielded by continuous monitoring of historic structures is however relatively recent.…”

Motion Magnification Applications for the Protection of Italian Cultural Heritage Assets

“…It provided a fundamental frequency estimate (1.95 Hz) by averaging ten MM runs (Figure 7c), which was quite close to the one obtained from the FRF of the seismograph signals (2.05 Hz). The Welch method for the PSD calculation has been used according to indications from the MM literature [19][20][21].…”

Motion Magnification Analysis for City Monitoring

“…3), while in the case of the Ponte delle Torri it is the wind. The trams passages induce very stronger vibrations to the so-called temple of Minerva Medica [6]. 4 shows the first frame of the magnified video recorded after a tram passage close to the temple of Minerva Medica.…”