Due to the high level of uncertainty characterizing existing buildings, the evaluation of the seismic behaviour of these structures must be preceded by an accurate reconstruction of their history. At this aim the present paper focuses firstly on the historical analysis and successively on the investigation of the seismic vulnerability of the “Quinto Orazio Flacco” school, built in Bari in 1933. The three-storey main masonry building has a M-shaped plan with maximum dimensions equal to 57.8 m and 82.4 m respectively in the transversal and longitudinal directions. In 1963 a new reinforced concrete building separated from the preexistent masonry one was realized along its free perimeter. By the analysis of the capacity curves obtained by suitable pushover procedures performed separately for each building, it emerges that masonry and reinforced-concrete buildings are vulnerable to earthquake-induced structural pounding in the longitudinal direction. In order to investigate this structural aspect, in this paper time history analyses are carried out, using detailed finite element three-dimensional models of the two buildings and a numerical procedure suitable elaborated by Matlab software.
