# Onsite Testing for Nonlinear Analysis of an Earthquake Damaged Historical Church in Italy
## 1 Introduction  
Safety assessment and conservation work have been central activities for the construction management of historical buildings. These two activities, obviously related to each other, connect the history of a building to its future. For seismic countries with meaningful architectural heritage, the seismic safety assessment embodies a permanent work that evolves in time based on the information collected from past seismic events. In this scenario, historical masonry religious buildings represent delicate and valuable constructions, first for their artistic testimony but also as a symbol of a local community and the embodiment of its traditions. Religious buildings such as the Italian Baroque churches, although deeply codified, exemplify the personal impulse of the architects of that period to experiment shapes and forms, which sometimes lead to premature damage (i.e., the collapse of the bell towers of Saint Peter in Rome designed by [PERSON] [1]). The prediction of the structural behavior of historical masonry buildings is a complex task to accomplish where the expected response is often misleading from the real one [2]. Different strategies have been developed to approach masonry structural analysis: limit analysis, simplified methods, FEM macro- or micro-modeling and discrete element methods (DEM) are considered with regard to their realism, computer efficiency, data availability and real applicability to large structures [3]. In [PERSON] and [PERSON] [4], a numerical study for the seismic assessment of a Portuguese masonry building typology was performed using a reduced scaled model and a finite element model. The numerical model was calibrated through the Douglas-Reid method based on the experimental natural frequencies obtainedin the modal identification of a reduced scale model. After the calibration of the numerical model, nonlinear time history analysis and nonlinear static pushover analysis were carried out to simulate the performance and the crack pattern of the physical model. The capacity curves were compared; however, in this typology of building it was found that pushover analysis does not correctly simulate the failure mode of the structure. Pushover analysis proportional to the first mode shape performed better in terms of load-displacement diagram correctly simulating the in-plane behavior. In [PERSON] [5], the finite element model of an historical masonry tower was tuned up based on the ambient vibration test; the best fitting between the analytical and the experimental values was achieved by taking into account the effect of the adjacent construction (changing the boundary conditions) and considering different types of masonry material in the numerical model. Then, nonlinear static and dynamic analyses were performed for the seismic assessment; the comparison of the two analysis provided levels of displacement capacity for the nonlinear dynamic analysis lower than the nonlinear static, this gap evidenced the incapacity to capture the inertial effects associated with the dynamic input in the nonlinear static analysis. In [PERSON] and [PERSON] [6], the behavior of eight historical masonry towers have been analyzed with detailed three dimensional FE models, non-linear dynamic analyses were performed using real accelerograms and a damage plasticity material model; the results are then compared with a non-linear static procedure based on pushover analyses. It was found that the results obtained with the non-linear static procedure were in a good agreement with those obtained from the nonlinear dynamic analysis. This work, starting from comprehensive on-site measurements on the mechanical characterization of masonry and the dynamic identification of the church of San Filippo Neri in Macerata, implements and tunes up an accurate finite element model of the construction including the ovoidal double-shell dome and elastic spring supports.