Luciano Laurenzi Agorvati Biography
Luciano Laurenzi Agorvati (1902 - 1966) was an archaeologist, conservator and university professor. Having obtained his degree from the University of Bologna in 1924, with Pericle Ducati, he initially dedicated himself to studies of Etruscology, which he resumed in the last years of his life, broadening his knowledge to the Villanovan civilisation. From 1925 until 1938 he was active in Greece, initially with Alessandro De Seta, a student of the Archaeological School of Athens, then in the Dodecanese in Rhodes, Lindos and Kos. It was on the island that he dedicated himself to the systematic excavation of the inhabited centre, destroyed by the terrible earthquake of 1933. In 1938 Laurenzi obtained the teaching qualification in Archeology and History of Greek and Roman art, a discipline of which he was a tenured professor in 1940-1941 . He then assumed the position of Superintendent of Antiquities of Milan, which he held in the years 1939-1940, before returning to Athens to assume the regency of the School of Athens from 1 July 1941. His direction, in the difficult years of the war, it lasted only two years and experienced a dramatic epilogue, linked to the events of the war: on 9 September 1943, after the Armistice of Cassibile, Laurenzi was arrested by the Germans. Returning to Italy, he obtained the professorship first in Pisa in 1944 and then in Bologna from 1946 until his death and, again in the city of Bologna, he was director of the Archaeological Museum for over twenty years. From 1958 he was admitted as a Corresponding Member of the Accademia dei Lincei.
