This is a fascinating exploration and interrogation of Italian and English archives relating to the exploitation and removal of antiquities aplenty from Rome and its environs by elites and their agents during the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of the Grand Tour. We hear of scholars of art and architecture, such as Robert and James Adam, gathering up drawings, paintings and architectural marbles from the 1750s; Sir John Dick, as diplomat and collector, but especially as British Consul at Livorno, who helped Grand Tourists with first locating, then exporting bought antiquities and facilitating export licences from the papal offices; the Irishman Matthew Nulty, agent and antiquary, and associate of Piranesi, dealing much in ‘affordables’; and natives such as Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, one of the leading antiquarian dealers in Rome, but also a well-regarded sculptor and restorer, and a trainer of new-generation sculptors, many employed by the Vatican.

Some of the visitors dabbled in digging, such as the ‘ambitious maverick’ Robert Fagan, working on various Via Appia tombs, then further afield at Ostia and eventually in Sicily; others helped fund Italian excavators, such as Nicola La Piccola working on the Palatine and at Tor Angela. Part II of this volume (pp 193–346) provides fascinating biographies of these multiple characters, along with summary details of finds, exports and sales, both abroad and also to eager collections and museums in Rome, such as the Pio-Clementino and the Capitolini – La Piccola became custodian here in 1780. These reveal the frightening scale of the dispersal of antiquities, the vicious clearance of ancient sites and the massive competition in collecting, restoring and supplying (including copies, casts and fakes). A second volume is due which will feature letters between patrons, purchasers, diggers and dealers.

As valuable is Part I of this volume (pp 31–191), rather blandly titled ‘A Catalogue of Sites’, but providing details on sites ‘excavated’ by British artist-dealers (notably Gavin Hamilton and Thomas Jenkins in the 1770s–90s) in their unquenchable hunt for marble works. We see how some were granted excavation licences that covered the whole territory of the papal state, with many a bribe lubricating the process (pp 23–8); and while there were many rules on procedure (such as drawing major finds in situ or structures that were permitted to be demolished) and even post-excavation (putting the land back in pristinum), we have too little information to show how ‘proper’ such explorations (or ‘cavas’) were. Entries for sites such as Centocelle, Gabii, Monte Cagnolo, Palestrina and Rome itself identify locations of work, licences provided, then reports or letters commenting on finds (for example, Hamilton on 25 May 1793 at Palestrina: ‘as yet have found nothing of great value but a Colossial statue of Antinous in the character of Bacchus … it is not as yet quite entire & wants several parts’ [sic]), and even details of transportation to Rome for restoration work.

The first-named author of this volume, Ilaria Bignamini, died in 2001 but had prepared much research for this volume; her studies had already been fundamental for the edited volume Archives and Excavations (Bignamini 2004); we must be very grateful to Clare Hornsby for completing, editing and publishing this major new corpus on ‘the British conquest of the marbles of ancient Rome’.

Bignamini, I (ed) 2004. Archives and Excavations: essays on the history of archaeological excavations in Rome and southern Italy from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, Brit Sch Rome Archaeol Monogr 14, London: British School at Rome