The concept of base isolation system as a means of seismic protection to structures seems to be more than a century old; but most of the older base isolation systems were unacceptably complicated. Masonry buildings of conventional construction are ideal candidates to be economically isolated by the wellaccepted modern base isolation techniques. The concept of friction seismic isolation (FSI) for masonry buildings has been developed as an altemative seismic isolation system. The paper presents a review of worldwide development of a FSI scheme in which isolation mechanism is purely sliding friction for masonry buildings. In the review, the findings concerning the response of structures with sliding support to two horizontal harmonic ground motion componerits is also presented. In view of such investigations, demonstration brick huildings have been built in China using FSI scheme. Thus, for low-cost masonry buildings, the FSI scheme is an attractive approach.