earthquake regulations

 no...no new laws as far as i am aware...  the rules have always been there...well in the recent past...Basilicata being quite a well known earthquake area would or should have had them all applied from long ago... however sales people when selling rarely mention the fact that restructuring will cost more than they estimate...  because they are quoting costs of rebuilds on a faint hope that existing buildings will be strong enough to fall inside building regs..  this is generaley untrue... and when you start real work you then find out that technicians will suggest that you have to go way beyond the original plans even to a complete rebuild... somewhere in between the two lies the truth... so the lie her in your story is that these regs always existed.. all buildings here have to be built to reg...who is to say the earthquake will not happen whilst you are in the shed... and the reason for the abruzzo buildings collapsing is that they were not...  this is despite the fact that the region of L'Aquila is all classed as seismic zone 1 the most likely to have a quake of a significant level...as are many parts of Basilicata the line runs down through there from the Molise and splits off two ways...one to calabria and sicily... the other down to the greek islands..  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Italy anyway heres a historical picture of the last 100 years in Italy and its quakes... you will find history repeats itself in terms of quakes and if an area has had one it will get another...  so its a pretty probable guide... as to why your property will need to be built to spec..  my thought would be to check if the house you live in has been built according to your geometras idea of new regs... because it should have been or if new... to newish ie in the last 20-30 years.. your geometra seems a bit slow on that ... and if before that it has been restructured according to regulations ...again seismic regs should have applied to this too

I do not think that this is anything new, but may vary from one region to another.  We are in North Tuscany, at the far end of the fault line and there have been such requirements for a number of years. These are so onerous that we are not even permitted to renew our roof without incurring the considerable cost of building a reinforced concrete cordola on top of all load bearing walls.

We are looking at an old palazzo which requires restoring. It is in a centro storico. Does anyone know if it will have to comply with anti seismic regs as I can't see how it would be possible install in such an old building integrated in the walls of a town?

Following the Aquila quake, there have been new national laws - or rather a standardisation of existing laws.  THese have mainly to do with foundations - the sondaggi must be deeper than previously and there are more geological tests to do.  For walls little has changed, but you cant just rebuild a wall in a seismic area, the 'new' laws came in Sicily throughout the 90's which require seismic rings, reinforcement and so on.  I would expect Basilicata to be the same.