Pompeii’s Stabian Baths. Mechanical behaviour assessment of selected masonry structures during the 1st century seismic events

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 buried and preserved the Stabian Baths building in the exact configuration which the archaeological excavations carried out in the second half of the nineteenth century recovered. By combining archeologists’ studies with the analysis of deformations and cracking pattern due to the 1st century seismic events, in this paper numerical models have been formulated which allowed the formation of some hypotheses coherent on the timeline of the events, the damage to as well as the change of the shape and stylistic language of the thermal building. Specifically, through global seismic analyses and kinematic analyses of masonry portions of the “destrictarium” block, it is proven that during the 1st century not only a sole catastrophic earthquake occurred but, at least, two important seismic events took place. The purpose of this paper is to identify and parameterize the responsible earthquake by the analysis of seismic effects detectable in the damages and archaeological remains of the masonry walls of the Stabian Baths. The identification of the earthquake and the grading of provoked damages represent a useful knowledge tool that provides information about the vulnerability of ancient buildings and can be suitably used also to safeguard architectural heritage from seismic risk.