Foreword 1968-2018: Fifty years after the Belice’s earthquake

The aim of this special issue of “Annals of Geophysics” is to follow the seismic thread that, starting with the Belice earthquake (14-15 January, 1968), crosses the recent history of our Country until the days of the 2016 Amatrice seismic sequence. We interpreted the Belice earthquake like the “zero event” for the developing of the connections between the Italian society and the seismic catastrophes, striking Italy in the post-war period. We considered the territory as a unit, made up of geographical, geological, social, historical and urban aspects, proposing nine papers with reflections and readings on these aspects. These reflections concern the geological and structural context in which the Belice earthquake occurred, such as the novelties proposed by the most recent research in geological, geophysical, geochemical and geodetic fields, but also themes and reflections on the impact that the earthquake has had on the Italian and Sicilian societies, on their housing and infrastructural contexts, on the history of our Country.