Nine hundred years since the largest earthquake in Northern Italy

Nine hundred years after the devastating earthquake that hit Verona and the central and eastern Po Valley areas, the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) is organizing a study day on Friday 20 January at Palazzo Franchetti in Venice to point on the knowledge and impact of the earthquake of 1117, in the light of current scientific know-how. The conference, which sees the collaboration of the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Venice (IVSLA) and the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Documentation of Extreme Events and Disasters (EEDIS), will be an important opportunity for comparison and verification on the analysis of seismic hazard of northern Italy, in particular of the north-east, and of the risk problems that the dense residential, industrial and artistic fabric poses today with increasing importance. A catastrophic event, that of 1117, for many years the object of study through the numerous written and epigraphic sources and the traces, partly still visible today, left in the architectural heritage of the affected areas. The earthquake of 3 January 1117 is, in fact, the oldest seismic event in the world for which there is a picture of the damage such as to allow today to estimate its epicentral area and magnitude with rigorous analytical techniques, the same ones used to analyze earthquakes of closer centuries. This event is unique, both as a concrete example of a rare and disastrous earthquake that could strike northern Italy again, and as an extraordinary testimony of Italian and European medieval culture. The conference will be attended, among others, by the President of INGV, Carlo Doglioni and the INGV research manager, Gianluca Valensise.

Conference program