170 Landside Problem and Its Investigations in Miskolc (Hungary) Mariann Vámos, Péter Görög, and Balázs Vásárhelyi Abstract The importance of Cultural Heritage has emerged since the early 1970s, including cultural, natural and mixed properties. Hungary is also one of those countries having great properties of importance such as historical castles, settlements, wine cellars. Northern Hungary has good advantage to develop man-made structures such as wine-cellars. The developments of wine cellars in Northern-Hungary were due to the suitable geological conditions, the social and the economical expectations in the 15th or 16th century. Recent rapid urban development and the population growth is causing damages within the infrastructures both on and under the surface that emerges geotechnical and engineering geological solution. In the city centre of Miskolc (Hungary) can be found the Avas hill, which contains more than 530 underground wine cellars and a church registered as a cultural heritage built in the 13th century. The hill is composed of late Badenian—mid Sarmatian (13.7–12.5 million years) acid dust tuff, variably bentonitic rhyolite tuff, and re-worked sandstone, intercalated placer and extraclastic andesite tuff. This article aims to reveal the cultural importance of the Avashill where reconstruction works should take place. The geological framework of the area significantly aggravates the stability problems, which is due to the heterogeneous geological strata. Identifying each layers in geotechnical aspects a ‘bimrock’ type of rock was found within the strata. Matrix and block contrast of the bimrock can define the behavior of this type of rock either under the surface or in outcrops. Our aims, to determine its rock mass and geotechnical classification and identify each bimrocks according to their matrix content as well as investigate its role within the geological strata. The heterogeneity of the hill reveals the question whether the poor geological characteristic of the rocks mainly determine the stability of the hill. Keywords Volcanic tuffs Á Bimrock Á Rock mass classification Á Historical site 170.1 Introduction The present study investigates the Avas hill formed in the material of Sarmatian succession over its valley environment as a relatively young, eroded remnant surface in the centre of Miskolc and at the intersection of fault lines in the Palaeo- Mesozoic basement. The greater part of the hill, the gentle sloping southern 2/3 is loaded statically by a residential area consisting of ten-storey blocks-houses and dynamically by traf fic. On the much steeper (25–65º) northern slope (Avas North) almost 530 cellars of 10–80 m in length in five M. Vámos (&) University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary e-mail: jaszjany@gmail.com P. Görög Department of Construction Materials and Engineering Geology, University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary e-mail: gorog.peter@mail.bme.hu B. Vásárhelyi Department of Structural Engineering, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary e-mail: vasarhelyib@gmail.com G. Lollino et al. (eds.), Engineering Geology for Society and Territory – Volume 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-09048-1_170, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 873