Graduated in Architecture at University of Rome “La Sapienza” with a capstone thesis on History and Conservation under the guidance of architectural historians Pier Nicola Pagliara and conservator Paolo Marconi. After practicing architecture for some years, he was admitted to the "Universita' IUAV di Venezia" for a PhD. program in Architectural History advised by architectural historian Howard Burns. Here, he defended a dissertation in 2001 on Palazzo Del Podestà in Bologna and bolognese civic architecture. During his doctorate program, he partook in a three-semester exchange program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. From there, he was hired as a research and teaching fellow at the School of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2001 he obtained the biennial Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University’s Art History and Archaeology Department, where he would end up teaching as an associate professor until December 2015. In 2008 he was fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut-Max Planck Institut in Florence, in 2014 he was made associate fellow at Columbia’s Italian Academy, and in 2019 he was given a research grant from the Getty Research Institute Library in Los Angeles, for a project revolving around digital Renaissance architectural databases. In Spring 2023 was invited Sidney Weinberg Fellow at the Italian Academy, Columbia University and in Spring 2024 will be Chercheur Invité at Centre Andre Chastel, Sorbonne Universite, Paris. In 2023 he was recipient of the Marie Curie Global grant in the capacity of supervisor, and of the PRIN grant as a P.I.
He was a visiting professor at Moscow’s National Research University, at the European Ph.D. program in Architecture and Theory Villard de Honnecourt, at Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture (GSAAP). He is a current member of the Italian Academy, Columbia University, International Observatory for Cultural Heritage. From 2019 to 2021, appointed by the Polo Museale del Lazio, he has been the director of the Museo di Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola's research group. His studies primarily focus on the history and theory of Italian and European Medieval and Renaissance architecture, and the historiography of Twenty-century and contemporary architecture. More recently, he was appointed scientific director of the “Digital Serlio Project” (https://library.columbia.edu/locations/avery/digitalserlio.html ) promoted by the Avery Library, Columbia University and the Getty Research Institute. Within these realms, his publications tackle aspects addressed to issues of construction, restoration, attribution, style, the rediscovery of Antiquity, and the relationship between architecture and art in the Islamic and Colonized world.
Currently his primary researches deal with Antonio da Sangallo the Younger’s vitruvian studies which book is due by Spring 2024, and the birth of architectural criticism between XIII and XVI century Italy.
In 2012, he received Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale (expired), which was reconfirmed in January 2020.
