Italy is one of the most exposed countries in the Mediterranean region to potential seismic events. Recent earthquakes have highlighted the significant vulnerability of small historic centres, which typically consist of old and poor-quality masonry constructions. The first step towards preserving these centres is to develop reliable predictive methods for assessing the seismic vulnerability of buildings on a large territorial scale. Among the most widely used methods for establishing a vulnerability index, some of them refer to several qualitative parameters about the main sources of vulnerability of the buildings in a given urban area. The paper proposes a simplified approach by integrating the widely used fast assessment GNDT method with the Masonry Quality Index (MQI) evaluation proposed in ‘'A method for the analysis and classification of historic masonry'’ by Borri et Al. (2015). This approach allows the determination of the mechanical properties of masonry by visual inspection only. The proposed simplified approach is evaluated by applying it to a real case, the ancient village of Casertavecchia (CE), a small medieval centre in southern Italy. The case study is well suited for validating the proposed method due to its remarkable historical and cultural value and numerous buildings with exposed masonry walls and aggregate structures. The present research is part of the wider research project GeNeSis – GestioNE del rischio SISmico per la valorizzazione turistica del mezzogiorno- funded by the Italian PON MIUR.