Archaeologist and independent researcher, she is one of the leading scholars of Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, on which she has published three volumes which are still reference texts.

She studied in Italy at the Universities of Genoa and Pisa and in the United States at Bryn Mawr College (Pennsylvania). She cooperated with the University of Trento, with the Superintendencies of Rome and Lazio and with European and American scholars.

She studied and cataloged other Roman villas in Venetia et Histria and in the countryside around Rome, with their decorations and structures, setting them in their historical, geographical and economic context.

She always combined the study of ancient sources with fieldwork research and exploration, the only way to have new ideas.

She was the first to use the Laser Scanner already in 2005, for the survey in the Accademia of Villa Adriana and other non-invasive techniques such as the geo-resistivimeter.

Together with the archaeoastronomer Giuseppe Veneziano, she is a pioneer in the study of Archaeoastronomy in ancient Roman buildings.
She discovered extraordinary illuminations in Villa Adriana, in the Pantheon and in Castel Sant'Angelo, architectural masterpieces of Emperor Hadrian.

Other discoveries concern the Villa Jovis in Capri, the Grotto of Tiberius in Sperlonga, the Palace of Diocletian in Split, the Mausoleum of Romulus on the Ancient Appian Way.