Severe seismic events affecting urban areas may have disastrous consequences if buildings are designed without appropriate seismic standards. This is more critical when it comes to national heritage and strategic facilities. On 24 August 2016, an earthquake of a magnitude Mw 6.0 caused severe damages, casualties, and collapses in four regions of Central Italy. The paper compares the ground motions recorded during the mainshock of 24 August 2016 to evaluate a reasonable seismic action for the Municipality of Amatrice. The comparison is made in terms of elastic response spectra calculated by processing accelerations acquired by the National Accelerometric Network (RAN) stations and “Osservatorio Sismico delle Strutture” (OSS) managed by the Italian Department of Civile Protection (DPC). Available data from recent studies of INGV that have been able to reconstruct the accelerations in different area of Amatrice, are used to evaluate the expected response spectra. Furthermore, estimates of response spectra in different sites of Amatrice induced by the 2009 L’Aquila Earthquake aftershocks obtained by attenuation curves available in the literature and site amplification are introduced. A precise comparison based on the response spectra obtained considering amplification factors proposed by the seismic microzoning maps and reconstruction of the site response is presented. Finally, comparisons between the retrieved elastic response spectra and the elastic demand spectra provided by the Italian seismic codes (DM 96, OPCM 3274, NTC 2008, and NTC 2018) are also performed.