On December 4th, 1690 a destructive earthquake occurred in the Eastern Alps. It caused considerable damage in the area not far from Villach/Carinthia and killed at least 24 people.

The research on this event was carried out by two teams of seismologists and historians: one has investigated Italian and former Yugoslavia sources (Barbano et al., 1994), the second one the sources of German speaking area.

This event is of interest to geoscientists for several reasons. Firstly, it occurred next to the periadriatic lineament, an important geological boundary which separates the Southern from the Eastern Alps. This lineament approximately follows the boundary between the North Italian highly active seismic zones and the Northern areas with low seismic activity. It caused the greatest damage not far from the epicentral area of another probably stronger event, which happened 342 years earlier, in January 25th 1348. A recent study (Hammerl, 1992) brought to light that the greatest damage related to this earlier event occurred in Friuli and not in Villach. Obviously very few but strong earthquakes are typical for this area where the seismic activity of the 20th century is remarkably low. This feature seems important for seismic hazard analysis.