Andrea Carandini

Andrea Carandini
Andrea Carandini (left) with Giorgio Napolitano
Born	(1937-11-03)3 November 1937 Rome, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Fields	Archaeology
Institutions	Università di Roma "La Sapienza
Doctoral advisor	Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli

Count Andrea Carandini (born November 3, 1937 in Rome, Italy) is an Italian professor of archaeology specialising in ancient Rome. Among his many excavations is the villa of Settefinestre.

The son of Italian diplomat Count Nicolò Carandini (1896–1972), Andrea was born in Rome and has was a member of the faculty of the University of Rome La Sapienza beginning in 1963. Carandini was a student of Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, completing his laurea in 1962 with a thesis on the Roman villa of Piazza Armerina. His research is focused on the topography of ancient Rome, Etruria in the Roman period, and the analysis of monumental complexes in various cities in Italy including Volterra, Grumentum, Pompeii, and Veii. Since 1993 he has coordinated a project in Rome's suburbium and the Tiber valley in conjunction with the Soprintendenza Archeologica and the Sovrintendenza Comunale di Roma. He continues to direct the excavations of the north slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome where important discoveries relating to the earliest city of Rome have been made, including the discovery of the famous Palatine wall in 1988.

Carandini is the third cousin of actor Christopher Lee.

In the 1990s Carandini was also involved in the excavation of the Auditorium site in Rome, a substantial domestic structure dating to the fifth century B.C.; it is most likely to have been the monumental residence of an important clan (gens). Some of his views on the historicity of Romulus are controversial.