ALLEGRANZA, GIUSEPPE. - Learned Dominican archaeologist, b. in Milan in 1713, d. in Rome in 1786. He undertook many educational journeys throughout Italy and also in southern France, forming friendships with many scholars. He chose Milan as his habitual residence; Maria Teresa awarded him a gold medal for merit in 1775.
He was a man of great ideals (he had even planned a kind of universal library, Pausiglia), a most prolific writer, though only of pamphlets and short works. Nearly all of them illustrate the Christian antiquities of Lombardy and some of Sicily. The principal ones are: Spiegazioni e riflessioni sopra alcuni sacri monumenti antichi di Milano, Milan 1757 (eight dissertations of a chiefly symbolographic character), and De sepulcris christianis in aedibus sucrii, Milan 1773, in defence of that custom, against an ordinance of the Austrian government.