Architetture verticali tradizionali a rischio in Sicilia orientale. Indagini speditive sul caso emblematico del centro storico etneo di Bronte

The recent seismic events in Central Italy have re-focused on the high seismic vulnerability of the bell towers in the European historic centres. The collapse of these structures, as in Accumuli and Amatrice, represents a painful loss of historic and artistic heritage but it is also a serious hazard for the locals. For these monuments comes the need, increasingly shared, to combine the demands of conservation of cultural value and those of safety. As also underlined by the 2011 Italian Guidelines for the evaluation and reduction of seismic risk of cultural heritage, every action of seismic improvement and restoration must necessarily be preceded by an appropriate “knowledge process”, to evaluate the different construction phases of the historic building, the relative technological solutions and geometric configurations, in a preventive way. To that end, this paper explains a part of a larger study about the traditional bell towers in Eastern Sicily (high-risk seismic and volcanic region) and summarises the main results of the step following the first catalogue on the whole Etna area. Considering a historic centre, meaningful to the concentration of valuable specimens such as that of Bronte (CT), the paper describes the expeditious analyses and surveys conducted on the bell towers of the sixteenth century, in terms of architectural and technical-constructive features. Subsequently, the ultimate aim of the research will be to identify, in these investigated aspects, the lability that may affect the structural behaviour of these slender masonry buildings.