Modern societies understand built cultural heritage as a landmark of culture and diversity. During the last decades, the idea that ancient buildings could be conserved and reused became appealing. Large investments have been concentrated in this field, leading to impressive developments in the areas of inspection, non-destructive testing, monitoring and structural analysis of historical constructions. These developments, and recent guidelines for reuse and conservation, allow for safer, economical and more adequate remedial measures. The presentation first addresses the issues of the methodology to adopt and selected cases studies, with a focus on earthquake engineering. For modern structural masonry, the use of unreinforced, confined and reinforced masonry is briefly addressed, discussing the influence of seismic hazard and presenting different solutions. Recent research on building systems for modern masonry structures is presented, together with conclusions on the performance of the systems for earthquake loading. The performance of masonry infills, with recent shaking table, is also presented. Finally, an overview of blast engineering of masonry structures is presented.