Lanciani, Rodolfo

LANCIANI, RODOLFO. - Archaeologist, b. at Montecelio (Rome) on 1 Jan. 1845, d. at Rome on 21 May 1929. He attended university studies in the Faculty of Engineering and trained particularly in the surveying of ancient monuments.

His first publication is the one included by G. B. De Rossi in his Bullettino di arch. crist. of 1866 (pp. 100-103) under the title Rapporto del sig. R. L. sulle recenti scoperte dell'edificio ripuntato lo Xenodochio di Pammachio in Porto. The great building works for the transformation of the city - after 1870 - attracted him in a special way, and gradually from engineer he became an archaeologist, completing with method his historical, philological and artistic preparation. After the royal prize of the Accademia dei Lincei and the publication in the Atti of the same Academy of his fundamental study on I commentari di Frontino intorno alle acque e agli acquedotti (vol. IV, 1880), he obtained in 1882 the chair of Roman topography, specially instituted for him, and held it until the age limit, in 1922.

For more than half a century he followed all the excavations of Rome, taking notes that were exemplary in method and clarity; with the help of skilled indexers he combed through the archives of the Vatican and of patrician Roman families; he collected documents, drawings, prints, in Italy and abroad, bought entire collections and thus formed his superb collection of 60,000 drawings, sketches, and prints of Roman monuments, which today is the pride of the Italian Institute of Archaeology and Art History. His index cards (about 85,000) are in small part preserved in the Institute itself and for the most part in the Vatican Library; they served for the compilation of the monumental Forma Urbis Romae, published in 1901 under the care of the Accademia dei Lincei, after eight years of assiduous work (46 plates on a scale of 1 to 1000).

His principal works are written in English (translated by his first wife); he had conceived them for the numerous Englishmen and Americans who came to Rome at that time to spend the winter, in order to spread among them knowledge of classical and Christian Rome. But written with that great knowledge of the sources and of the material, with that clarity, with that exactness of method that were his own, they prove in reality to be works of first reference and of great scientific value. Here are some of them: Ancient Rome in the light of modern discoveries (London 1888); The ruins and excavation of ancient Rome (ibid. 1892, Boston 1908, also translated into French); New tales of old Rome (London 1901); Wandering in the Roman Campagna (ibid. 1909; Boston 1924); Ancient and modern Rome (Boston 1925). In all these works he combined the study of antiquity with that of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, demonstrating a great breadth of information and a particular interest in the Rome of the popes: important in this regard are the two volumes Pagan and christian Rome (London 1892; Boston 1908) and The destruction of ancient Rome (London 1899, with a French translation); these volumes show the transformation undergone through the centuries by the imperial city; the volume Wandering through ancient Roman Churches (Boston 1924) completes the works of Armellini and Hülsen on the same subject, while the volume The golden days of the Renaissance in Rome (ibid. 1906) is a masterly brushstroke on the artistic and monumental life of the city in that golden period. Special mention should also be made of certain of his studies relating to the topography of Christian Rome, namely the monograph: L'itinerario di Einsiedeln e l'ordine di Benedetto Canonico, in Monumenti della R. Accademia dei Lincei (I, 1891); and the articles: Delle scoperte fatte nel 1838 e 1850 presso il sepolcro di Paolo Apostolo, in Nuovo bull. di arch. crist., 23 (1917), pp. 7-27 and La memoria Apostolorum e gli scavi in S. Sebastiano, in Dissert. delle Pont. accad. rom. di arch., 2nd series, 14 (1919), pp. 57-109. To complete the great plan of Rome, he began in 1902 the publication of a Storia degli scavi di Roma, of which only 4 vols. saw the light (IV, 1913), comprising precious information on the discoveries that occurred from the year 1000 A.D. to the year 1605. He also wrote many articles in the Atti of the Accademia dei Lincei and of the Pont. rom. academy of archaeology, in the Bollettino archeologico comunale and in the Bullettino and in the Annali dell'Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica.

Giuseppe Lugli