Conservation and seismic strengthening of Byzantine churches in Macedonia General considerations regarding the conservation of historic buildings in seismic zones Criteria and objectives Retrofitting approaches Overview of Byzantine churches Architecture Frescoes Types of Byzantine churches Structural characteristics Surface characteristics Survey of existing Byzantine churches in Macedonia Present state of selected church buildings causes and level of damage Authenticity Churches selected for detailed investigation The church of St. Nikita Banjani Proposed strengthening method and preliminary analysis of the retrofitted St. Nikita Church Possible methods for repair and strengthening of historic structures Design of the St. Nikita Church model Model construction Wall element tests Shaking table tests of the St. Nikita Church model Tests of the original church model Repair and strengthening of the damaged model Tests of the repaired and strengthened church model Analytical modeling of the dynamic behavior of masonry structures exposed to earthquake motions Dynamic analysis of the nonlinear response of an idealized single degree of freedom system Dynamic equations of motions Models of hysteretic behavior Analytical studies and correlation of the behavior of the two models Original model Strengthened model The bearing and deformability capacities of the model structures at the design and maximum levels of expected ground motion Capacity analysis of masonry buildings Mathematical model of the Byzantine church structure Analysis of structural walls Calculation procedure Results from the MASAN program for the original St. Nikita model Results for the strengthened church model Bearing capacity of the church model structure Capacity analysis of existing Byzantine church structures Analysis of St. Nikita Banjani Analysis of St. Bogorodica Zahumska Trpejca Analysis of St. Nikola Psaca Analysis of St. Bogorodica Matejce Analysis of St. Gjorgji Kurbinovo Implementation of methods for repair and strengthening of Byzantine church structures Possible methods and techniques for repair and strengthening of historic Byzantine churches Repair and strengthening of historic monuments in accord with the experimentally verified methodology Strengthening of the structures of three representative churches Summary conclusions and recommendations List of churches surveyed Single degree of freedom analysis flowchart Experimental and analytical displacement and acceleration time history Results of dynamic response analysis of the existing St. Nikita Church using the IZIIS hysteretic model