Earthquakes in Rome. by breughel
When visiting and writing reviews about Roman monuments I read so much about earthquakes shaking the Colosseum half a dozen times, destroying Basilica's, that I felt it my duty to add this type of event to "Rome warnings and dangers".Don't think this danger is just far away in the past; on 22/08/2005 the centre of Rome felt an earthquake of 4.5 on the Righter scale. There was a lot of talking between neighbours on the streets but no serious damages.
And closer to us on 12/04/2008 a small earthquake has shaken the Alban Hills southeast of Rome during the night and woke many people.
Don't think that nothing serious can happen and that pickpockets are much more a danger than earthquakes! On 26 September 1997 strong earthquakes struck central Italy and shook Assisi so strongly that frescoed vaults of the upper Basilica collapsed.
When I wrote this in 2008 I could not imagine what was going to happen one year later in Aquila..
This night (6/04/2009) a terrible earthquake struck the mountainous Abruzzo region with the city of Aquila at 100 Km east of Rome. There are more than 250 death and enormous destructions. All my sympathy goes to the victims.
