Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

Rodolfo Lanciani (1845–1929) was an Italian archaeologist and the foremost authority of his time on the topography of ancient Rome. Born in Rome, he took part in the excavations that accompanied the city's rebuilding after it became the capital of Italy in 1870, and taught Roman topography at the University of Rome. His great map, the Forma Urbis Romae, recorded the ancient city at a scale never attempted before. For English and American readers, many of whom heard him lecture, he wrote Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, Pagan and Christian Rome and The Destruction of Ancient Rome.