The paper is very interesting and well written. I have a long experience (as a user) of the Italian macroseismic database and in the past, I always hoped for the integration of macroseismic data from different studies instead of choosing only one of them as preferred. Finally this important operation has been carried out in a thoughtful and accurate way. I suggest extending further such integration to all remaining earthquakes for which multiple studies are available.

I have only few minor comments for the authors:

• You might cite a couple of recent papers discussing the effects of the application of MCS and EMS98 scales to macroseismic magnitudes.
• Online questionaries are cited in the introduction but are not mentioned further. Please explain why you believe they are not useful to integrate the macroseismic datasets.
• In case studies, please report and compare available instrumental magnitudes with macroseismic ones.
• I could be interesting to compare the average difference between macroseismic and instrumental magnitudes and between magnitudes computed from MCS and EMS98 intensities before and after the data integration operation.
• Gasperini et al. (1999, 2010) are cited but not listed in References.

Paolo Gasperini

The paper presents updated macroseismic fields for 45 earthquakes that occurred in Italy by integrating different existing studies. The authors present the methodology used to integrate the different studies. The input data of the different studies are clearly described and the methodology used is well outlined. The case studies presented illustrate the methodology applied, the difficulties encountered by the authors and how they resolved them. The paper as a whole is well written, and thanks to this, the methodology applied can be easily reproduced for other earthquakes and also in other area. As an occasional user of the Italian database, I was pleased to see the improved macroseismic fields updated in this study, and hope that this work will be extended to other earthquakes.

I have one minor comment, which is more a question for the authors:

In your methodology guidelines, you stated that “Localities with intensity value (I) in the EMS-98 and MCS scales assigned after a field survey have been included in the new dataset without further check”. In the case study of the Moline earthquake, if I understand well, you did reassess intensity for a locality for a locality that had been assigned an intensity value after a field survey. I understand that it was necessary, but did you have a specific reason to check again the data associated with this locality?