Full professor of Archaeology and History of Islamic Art at the University of Udine. He also taught courses at the Universities of Venezia, Firenze and Milano (Università Cattolica). A traveller and connoisseur through Middle Eastern lands as an archaeologist and historian of Islamic art, he is a well-known scholar with a deeply rooted international fame. He wrote about 150 books and articles published all over the world. He organized and edited catalogues of several exhibitions concerning the Islamic culture in Italy and abroad. The last exhibition he supervised was “Islamic Art and Florence from the Medici to the 20th Century” at the Uffizi Gallery and the National Museum Bargello in Firenze in 2018.