ABSTRACT
Violet le Duc observed that a common masonry building in his age was composed by masonry walls, cover at first floors with vaults and at higher floors with timber floors and roof. The development of appropriate tools to assess the actual structural performances taking into account also seismic actions and to design and execute interventions capable to improve such performances, is a key issue in the field of conservation and valorisation of architectural heritage. Strengthening vaults with the addition of elements that bear tensile stresses completely change the failure mechanism. The introduction of fibre reinforced composites in structures has involved in last decades a growing number of tests on strengthening masonry of wall and vaults. The refurbishment project of the castle assumes the demolition of a barrel vault in one chambers of the western tower. The vault strengthened with the diaphragm walls presented much stiffer behaviour than the unreinforced one but less than composite reinforcements.
