A structural analysis of the Modena Cathedral

Historical monuments, by its own features and time evolution, represent a "unicum" characterized by large uncertainties. To reduce the uncertainties and lead to a more robust assessment it is of fundamental importance to carry out a preliminary, but comprehensive, study with the integration of different fields. The scope of this paper is to present a preliminary assessment of the structural “health” of the Modena Cathedral making use of a multi-disciplinary multi-analysis approach. The approach is based on the development of a multi-disciplinary research able to providing an “integrated knowledge” of the building and a kind of multi-analysis method, which seeks to integrate the results of analyses based on different approaches (from simple but more reliable limit schematizations, to more complex but, usually less robust, computer-based models).