GNGTS 2022 - Atti del 40° Convegno Nazionale

404 GNGTS 2022 Sessione 3.2 DIAGNOSTIC MULTIDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATIONS IN THE MOTHER CHURCH AT MISTERBIANCO AT ETNA VOLCANO: A CASE-STUDY FROM THE 1669 ERUPTION C. Bottari 1 , P. Capizzi 2 , R. Martorana 2 , R. Azzaro 1 , S. Branca 1 , R. Civico 3 , M. Fucile 4 , E. Pecora 1 1 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Catania, Osservatorio Etneo, Catania, Italy 2 Università degli Studi di Palermo, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e del Mare, Palermo, Italy 3 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Roma1, Roma, Italy 4 Topcon Positioning Italy, Ancona, Italy Introduction. Misterbianco is a small and important town located on the southern slope of the Mt. Etna (Fig. 1). Its position at the periphery of the volcano, in front of the Simeto river valley and dominating the Catania plain, enabled the town to richness importance in the local territorial framework until the mid of the 17 th century (Amico, 1757). From that time, the old town of Misterbianco (known as Monasterium Album ) underwent two natural catastrophes that heavily conditioned the history of this part of Sicily: the 1669 Etna eruption and the 1693 earthquake. The eruption caused a lava field extending for ​40 km 2 and a maximum flow length of 17 km that greatly impacted the territorial setting of the southern flank of Mt. Etna (Branca et al. , 2015). Lava buried villages and minor settlements, reached the city of Catania and finally entered into the sea. A large part of the architectural heritage was destroyed and the landscape after the eruption turned into a wasteland. After two decades, the 1693 earthquake produced large destruction in the whole south-eastern Sicily (Boschi and Guidoboni, 2001) . The few remnants surveying the 1669 eruption are not adequately exploited as well the Sanctuary of Monpilieri and the Chiesa Madre (Mother Church) of the old Misterbianco (Fig. 1a-b). The first one, located next to the 1669 main vent, was buried beneath a 15 m thick lava; whereas the second one was partially covered by lava flow and the bell tower of the church was the only still standing portion, hereinafter named Campanarazzu (Fig. 1c). Fig. 1 - a) Map of the 1669 lava flow with the position of “buried” churches of Mompilieri and old Misterbianco; b) The old settlement (red box) is nowadays located few kilometers from the new Misterbianco; c) The bell tower of the Mother Church was the only structural element standing out from the lava field; d) The remains of the church during the excavation works; e) Orthophoto-mosaic overlapped on the digital surface model of the investigated site, showing the position of the Mother Church and the San Nicolò Church.