Pigorini was born at
Fontanellato, near
Parma. At the age of sixteen years, in 1858, he became an
alumnus of the Museo d'Antichità di Parma (Museum of Antiquities of Parma, now Parma Archaeological Museum). He later encountered
Pellegrino Strobel, the professor of
Natural Sciences at the
University of Parma and
Gaetano Chierici, director of the
Gabinetto di Antichità Patrie di Reggio Emilia or Cabinet of Antiquities of the native land of Reggio Emilia (now Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia ) and began archaeological research in the territory of Parmesan. In 1863, he began to travel in
Switzerland and
Tuscany, and also studied in
Rome and
Naples. He ran a course in Parma where he resorted to various materials in order to explain the uses and the functions of
prehistoric tools. A few years later after becoming a
Bachelor of Arts in Political and Administrative Sciences he became director of the Museum of Antiquity of Parma. In 1875, he founded with Chierici and Strobel a paleoethnological journal
Bollettino di Paletnologia Italiana and, in the same year, began working in the Archaeological Director General's office in Rome (Direzione Generale dei Musei e degli Scavi d'Antichità del Regno a Roma) where he proposed to the Minister of Public education, Bonghi, the foundation of the
Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome, that was inaugurated in 1876 and which bears his name. For his outstanding contribution to Italian archaeology he was nominated a
Senatore a vita in 1912 and was vice president of the
Italian Senate in 1919 remaining so until his death in
Padua in 1925. ==Achievements==