Paolo Orsi arrived in Sicily, in Syracuse, on September 7, 1888, as an inspector of excavations, museums and galleries. He was twenty-eight years old but could already boast an excellent start to his career in a field that would always remain his favorite: scientific research on prehistory. The decisive personality for his training was in fact Luigi Pigorini, the palethnologist who obtained the first chair in this subject at Sapienza, in 1877.
Orsi's method, determination and sensitivity managed to impose themselves in a disruptive way on a reality full of contradictions: after a few years, in 1891, he became director of the National Museum of Syracuse and in 1907 he was entrusted with the direction of the three Superintendencies that protect eastern Sicily, always based in Syracuse. Over the course of forty years, Orsi revolutionized knowledge of prehistory, conducting systematic excavations in sites that yielded precious data to reconstruct the history of civilization in Sicily “before the Greeks,” to quote the title of a famous book by another great scholar, Luigi Bernabò Brea.
Another determining element of Orsi’s work is the quality of the documentation that the archaeologist obtained from excavations and research: always extensive and usable from other points of view. The result is the one hundred and fifty notebooks, still preserved today in Syracuse, currently being published by the Accademia dei Lincei. Orsi’s places are many: among these, Megara Hyblaea, Locri, Pantalica, the Aeolian Islands, Akrai, Camarina, Morgantina, Lentini, Sant’Angelo Muxaro stand out, but a particular and uninterrupted affection ties the scholar to his context of origin: Rovereto and Trentino. His memory is still alive today, with the International Archaeological Film Festival that is organized every year by the Civic Museum of Rovereto.
