Geological setting, hazards and urban growth in some historical towns of Italy.

This multidisciplinary field trip will focus especially on the influence (or lack of influence) of geology and geohazards on urban planning in some of the most renowned towns but also in less known but enticing spots of Italy. Therefore, cultural interest is guaranteed. Italian towns display a great variety of geological-geomorphological settings, and have experienced with time many extreme natural events, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, or relatively slow phenomena such as subsidence. All this has strongly affected the urban texture, occasionally determining the decay of towns, more often the search for appropriate technical solutions and the flourishing of architectural and urban planning masterpieces, especially during the richest artistic periods. The field trip will provide the participants a chance to visit several Italian art-filled towns, discovering not only their beauty but also the geological and geomorphological ground underneath and how this has influenced urban choices up to the 20th century. We believe this is a unique opportunity to discover how the arts and nature have blended in world artistic heritage sites such as Florence, Naples, Rome and Venice.