NIBBY, ANTONIO. - Archaeologist and topographer, born in Rome on 14 Oct. 1792, died there on 29 Dec. 1839. While still a youth he founded among his fellow pupils a small Academy which he called the Ellenica, intended to promote the study of Greek and Latin literature; from it there separated in 1814 the Tiberina Academy, which had a long and glorious life. In 1812 N. was appointed as a writer of Greek at the Vatican Library. In 1820 he obtained in the Roman Archiginnasio the chair of archaeology, which he also taught at the Academy of France.
He published as early as 1817 a translation of Pausanias with a praised essay of critical, geographical, and antiquarian observations, issued by the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology; he then annotated and glossed the new edition of the Roma antica by Nardini, with particular regard to the ancient consular roads. There followed: Viaggio antiquario nei dintorni di Roma (1819); Viaggio antiquario alla villa di Orazio, a Subiaco, a Trevi e presso la sorgente dell'Aniene (1826); Viaggio antiquario ad Ostia (1829); Analisi storico-topografico-antiquaria della carta dei dintorni di Roma (3 vols., 1837; 2 vols. posthumous 1848-49); Roma nell'anno 1838 (4 vols., 1838-41). He also wrote a long series of essays, most of them in the Dissertazioni of the Roman Academy of Archaeology, among which should be cited those on the Temple of Peace and the Basilica of Constantine, on the Roman Forum, the Via Sacra, the Flavian Amphitheatre, the statue of the Dying Gladiator, Hadrian’s Villa, etc.
A particular merit of N. was that he gave direction to the studies of the topography of ancient Rome, the roads, and the monuments of the Roman countryside.