LAUSR

Abstract Masonry cross vaults, which began to be built in Europe in the times of the Roman Empire and reached heights of extraordinary splendor during the Gothic Period, are part of an impressive architectural heritage, which stand in need of evaluation, maintenance and repairs or renovation. Nowadays, the requirements of preservation and conservation of the historical heritage call for a strategy oriented on the description of the structural behaviour from different characteristic perspectives without neglecting the functional, architectonic and structural features. The present paper is intended to discuss the different research approaches adopted by several authors during the past and to show how numerical simulations in conjunction with experimental studies can provide the tools for the quantification of the damages produced by a variety of different critical events. To this scope, this paper includes an extensive and somewhat ambitious review, dealing with a wide variety of aspects, such as: (a) a bibliometric study, (b) classification of the types of cross vaults, (c) structural behavior, (d) types of failures and damage, (e) numerical simulation, (f) experimental testing, (g) monitoring, and (h) retrofitting. The review is expected to be of great interest for architects and engineers working in the field of evaluating and retrofitting the architectural heritage, as well as to those researchers who would find it useful to have at hand in a single document the most important advances made in the field of masonry cross vaults in recent years.