Impulsive tests on historical structures: The dome of teatro massimo in Palermo

Cultural heritage is the set of things, that having particular historical cultural and aesthetic are of public interest and constitute the wealth and civilization of a place and its people. Sharpen up methodologies aimed at safeguarding of monuments is crucial because the future may have in mind the historical past. Italy is a country that has invested heavily on its historical memory returned in large part by the historical building or the monuments. Furthermore, culture represents a fundamental indicator of the growth of the culture of a country. Consider a monitoring project of one of the most Impressive theater in the world, like “Teatro Massimo” in Palermo (Italy), means to add value to both of the issues mentioned above. Among several methods providing useful information about the conservation status of the structures, dynamic monitoring techniques are suitable to check and restore the global behavior of the buildings. The anomalous features diagnosis of the structural dynamic response is an index of alterations of the material state and, in the worst cases, is related to the presence of damaged structural elements. The present paper assesses, through a real investigation, the importance of dynamic tests on historical buildings. In particular impulsive tests return the main structural characteristics describing the current behaviour. Such tests are then crucial for updating numerical evaluation and check the need of restoring original main features or not, suggesting a strategy of restoration as well.