SEISMIC VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF AN ITALIAN ANCIENT CHURCH ACCORDING TO CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES Stefania Imperatore 1 , Gian Piero Lignola 2 and Barbara Ferracuti 1 1 Department of Civil Engineering, Niccolò Cusano University via Don Carlo Gnocchi, 3 – 00166 – Rome, Italy. e-mail: {barbara.ferracuti, stefania.imperatore}@unicusano.it 2 Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture, University of Naples “Federico II” Via Claudio, 21 - 80125 - Naples, Italy. e-mail: glignola@unina.it Abstract Due to their architectural features, ancient masonry churches are typically prone to seismic damages. Therefore, the social and cultural relevance of such structures requires the assess- ment of their seismic vulnerability, that is influenced by great halls, lack of a proper connec- tion between the walls, and floor diaphragms not sufficiently rigid to allow a proper distribution of the seismic actions. In the present paper a case study is selected to assess the seismic vulnerability of a masonry church according to the conventional approach suggested by the Italian Guidelines on the evaluation and reduction of the seismic vulnerability of the Cultural Heritage. The Guidelines suggest a methodology characterized by increasing complexity of analysis. In detail, the first two levels of analysis are applied, assessing a qualitative analysis for evaluating the global seismic performance of the structure (LV1) and the local response of structural portions based on the macro-elements approach (LV2). The obtained results highlight the influence of the sensitivity of the technician opinion in ap- plying the proposed methodology, since it is not certain that the less accurate approach is as- sociated with a higher safety level, although it should be associated with greater uncertainties. Such occurrence verifies especially when the efficiency of the seismic protec- tion devices is overestimated, and the effectiveness of the masonry toothing is underestimated. Keywords: Ancient Masonry Churches, Seismic Vulnerability, Structural Analysis Methods. 2465 COMPDYN 2023 9 th ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering M. Papadrakakis, M. Fragiadakis (eds.) Athens, Greece, 12-14 June 2023 Available online at www.eccomasproceedia.org Eccomas Proceedia COMPDYN (2023) 2465-2475 ISSN:2623-3347 © 2023 The Authors. Published by Eccomas Proceedia. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of COMPDYN 2023. doi: 10.7712/120123.10575.21313