At present there are over 10,000 structures in the world that are protected by means of seismic isolation (SI), energy dissipation (ED) and other seismic vibration passive control (SVPC) systems and devices. They are located in more than 30 countries. Italy is now fifth at worldwide level (after Japan, the P.R. China, the Russian Federation and the USA) and is first in Western Europe. In the last years, however, there was a large increase of the number of the applications completed and, especially, of those in progress or under design. This was due at first to the new Italian seismic code, enforced in May 2003 by Ordinance Nr. 3274 of the Prime Minister (mostly as a consequence of the San Giuliano di Puglia tragedy during the 2002 Molise and Puglia quake), which freed and simplified the adoption of the SVPC systems; a second cause was the 6.3 magnitude Abruzzo earthquake of April 6, 2009. The new applications in Abruzzo recently made Italy fourth at worldwide level for the number of isolated buildings. Moreover, Italy remains among the worldwide leading countries for the number and importance of bridges and viaducts protected by the SVPC systems (which are over 250) and also for the manufacturing of the latter (especially of the SI ones) for applications to all kinds of structures abroad. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art of applications of anti-seismic techniques in Italy, with particular attention to the most recent ones of SI to buildings.
