The April 6, 2009 earthquake caused extensive damage to the historical center of Poggio Picenze, a small village 20 km East of L'Aquila, where most of the buildings are made of stones and are the result of centuries of incremental construction.

The proposed paper describes the experience of a group of researchers of the Universities of Chieti-Pescara and L'Aquila, that support the municipality of Poggio Picenze. The research group is interdisciplinary and includes structural engineers, architects, city planners,  conservation experts and geologists, and its main objectives are to define reference guidelines for the conservation, rehabilitation, and safety enhancement of the built environment.

From the structural viewpoint, the focus is on two aspects, based on the results of the damage survey performed on many traditional masonry buildings and infrastructures: 1) guidelines for rehabilitation/reconstruction of buildings' aggregates, starting from the procedures of damage assessment and retrofitting of single buildings; 2) implications of structural damage (e.g. collapse mechanisms) and retrofitting at the town scale, in the framework of a modern seismic-risk mitigation strategy that requires to allocate financial resources in such a way to guarantee at least a minimum urban structure (paths, roads, squares, etc.) after a major earthquake.