Masonry buildings are one of the most commonly found structures throughout the world. In seismic areas, people developed several techniques and practices to make them safer in case of earthquakes. One of the most widespread techniques, used for centuries in several countries of Asia, Middle East, Europe, Central and South America, is the insertion of horizontal timber seismic bands into the load-bearing masonry walls. This paper first describes the variation in the timber bands disposals and how it correlates with local seismic activities in different regions of the Alpine-Himalayan belt. This research is based on a literature review and on several on-site surveys. Then, an analysis resulting from post-earthquakes observations, some experiments and a literature review allows for a global understanding on how these timber bands may contribute to a good behaviour of masonry buildings during earthquakes: by tying the building together, by preventing the propagation of diagonal shear cracks on the in-plane walls and flexural cracks on the out-of-plane walls, by dissipating energy, etc. The third part of the paper deals with two experimental campaigns conducted to better understand the mechanical impact of the reinforcement. The first one is based on two adobe walls (with and without horizontal timber reinforcement) submitted to lateral quasi-static cyclic load. It allowed for the estimation of the lateral strength, the stiffness degradation and the dissipated energy of both reinforced and unre-inforced masonry walls and for the comparison of their failure modes. The second experimental campaign focuses on the energy dissipation that occurs at the interface between the seismic band and the masonry depending on the materials used and their disposals. To this purpose, seismic bands in concrete, timber and bamboos of different configurations are submitted to lateral quasi-static cyclic loads and the energy dissipation occurring is calculated.