Historical buildings constitute a huge heritage for the Italian country, and they deserve to be preserved to be handed over in good condition for future generations. As well know, Italy is a prone earthquake country and many earthquakes occurred over time producing awful consequences in terms of human losses and building damage. Historical buildings are typically the most damaged ones since they were built often with poor materials and conceived to sustain only gravitational loads. The preservation of these buildings is not a trivial task as structural retrofits have to be carried out not only in a proper way, but also timely in the case the actual conditions of the construction may worse over time. For this purpose, instrumenting the structure with appropriate sensors and analyzing measured data in an awareness way becomes crucial.

This paper presents the SHM system developed for the Santa Maria in Via church located in Camerino town (central Italy). This church, severely damaged after the seismic sequence that stroke Central Italy in 2016, was secured with a steel structural system aimed at preventing possible collapse of some peculiar components as the massive façade body and the slender elliptical drum. The SHM system permanently installed, which consists in several sensors and transducers of different typologies placed in specific positions to monitor the effectiveness of the securing steel structure and the behaviour of the church, is presented. Furthermore, the numerical model developed to support the SHM implementation, is described.