ABSTRACT
The village of Corniglio, in the Parma Apennines (Northern Italy), has been involved for the last three years by a huge landslide — currently one of the largest in Europe — causing considerable socioeconomic damages. The main slope movement, which has now reached displacements of over 50 m, is a composite landslide, reactivated by its original causes, namely geomechanical characteristics decay due to weathering, high groundwater pressures following periods of intense rainfall and local seismic activity. Strictly correlated, an adjacent slope movement involving the old city centre has also appeared since early 1996, fortunately giving rise only to limited damages so far. The paper aims to present the currently available information on such very instructive case history: in particular it describes the extensive site investigation and monitoring scheme carried out both on the main landslide and, above all, on the city centre, which enabled to outline the stratigraphic profiles, provide the geotechnical characterisation of the main units and develop a preliminary stability analysis of the two interconnected slope movement phenomena. However, due to the unusual landslide size, all possible remedial works are necessarily partial and very expensive.
