ORSI, PAOLO. - Archaeologist, b. at Rovereto on 18 Oct. 1859 and d. there on 8 Nov. 1935. A professor at the Liceo-Ginnasio of Alatri, he was later deputy librarian at the Nazionale of Florence.
From 1878-89 his scientific activity was devoted to the antiquities of the Trentino; in 1888, in collaboration with F. Halbherr, he studied the cave of Zeus Ideo in Crete. In 1889 he was assigned to the Archaeological Museum of Syracuse, where he immediately began studies and research on the origins and evolution of the Sicel civilization and on the relations between the Sicans and the Sicels, demonstrating that the former had come to the island from the sea and the latter from the mainland. His first essays were the illustration of the Neolithic site of Stentinello (Bull. di paletnologia, 1890) and those of the Sicel necropolises of Melilli and of Pammiro (ibid., 1891). His first great monograph was on the necropolis of Megara Hyblaea (Monum. Ant. dei Lincei, I, 1892).
His first systematic excavation campaign was the exploration of the necropolis of Fusco, near Syracuse (Not. Scavi, 1893). Among the innumerable studies produced by his remarkable activity in Sicily and Calabria, mention should be made of: the memoir on the Sicel necropolises of Pantalica and Cassibile (Monum. Lincei, IX, 1899), the reports on the archaic necropolis of Gela (Notizie Scavi, 1901; Monum. Lincei, XVII, 1906) and the monograph on Locri Epizephiri (Boll. d'arte, 1909) and the monumental one on the Athenaeum of Syracuse (Monum. Lincei, XXV, 1919). Moving down through the centuries, he did not forgo traversing the recesses of the Christian cemetery galleries of Syracuse and illustrating them (Notizie Scavi, 1893-95; Röm. Quartalschrift, 1896). He also studied other Christian cemeteries of Sicily, some of which belonged to heretical sects (Röm. Quartalschrift, 1899); his studies in this field were the basis for the work of J. Führer (v.). He published a Sicilian Christian miscellany in the Nuovo Bull. di Archeol. crist., 1903, and a Manipulus epigraphicus christianus in memory of G. B. De Rossi (in Memorie della Pont. accad. rom. di archeol., new series, 1 [1923], pp. 113-22). He extended his investigations as far as the study of the Nilian churches of S. Adriano in S. Demetrio Corone, of the Patirion of Rossano (Boll. d'arte, 1921-23) and of the Byzantine churches of Calabria in general (Collezione meridionale, 1928, p. 337, fig. 190); he personally oversaw the restoration of the Cattolica of Stilo. He was a senator and a national member of the Accademia dei Lincei. A scholar of ready intuition, of varied and profound learning, sure in his method of investigation, his writings amount to more than 400 and in their entirety form a substantial individual contribution to the progress of archaeological and historical disciplines.
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Gioacchino Mancini