Sustainable Modelling of Historic Masonry: Learning from the past

Masonry structures constitute the majority of Italy’s architectural heritage and display a distinctive mechanical behaviour due to their inability to resist tensile stresses. These characteristic challenges conventional elastic approaches, calling for assessment methods grounded in geometry and equilibrium. Building on historical construction principles and modern limit analysis, this study examines selected arches, vaults, and domes to illustrate how non-elastic frameworks can effectively capture their stability conditions. The cases include single-span arches with localised damage, as well as complex double-shell domes, where construction choices and historical modifications directly influenced thrust distribution. Across these examples, structural safety emerges as a function of the thrust line’s containment within the masonry thickness, independent of material deformation capacity. The findings emphasise that sustainable heritage conservation lies not only in the inherent ecocompatibility of masonry but also in the adoption of non-invasive, methodologically coherent assessment strategies that respect the original design logic of historical structures.