Rita Sassu is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology at Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome and a member of the Lincean Interdisciplinary Centre for Young Researchers of the Accademia dei Lincei. She is Director of Sapienza University of Rome’s archaeological mission at Gortyn (Crete, Greece), carried out under an excavation concession granted by the Italian Archaeological School at Athens.
She is the scientific coordinator of the Cooperation Agreement between Unitelma Sapienza, the University of the Peloponnese and the Institute of Sparta for the promotion of studies and research on the polis of Sparta. She also directs the annual Archaeological Summer School devoted to the study of the ancient Laconian city. She coordinates numerous projects in the field of Classical Archaeology, including the PRIN project ArchiTa, focusing on the monuments and topography of Taranto.
She was awarded the Feltrinelli Prize for Young Scholars in recognition of her extensive research on Greece and Magna Graecia.
She has delivered papers at more than 200 conferences and is the author of over 140 publications on Classical Archaeology, with a particular focus on the archaeology of cult in ancient Greece (Lo spazio del culto. Elementi e strutture del santuario greco, Catania 2022), the relationship between public economy and sacred resources (Hiera chremata. Il ruolo del santuario nell’economia della polis, Rome 2014), the Roman provinces (Hadrian’s Wall. Gods in Relief, Rome 2025), cultural heritage (European Heritage Label, Rome 2019), and citizenship in the ancient world (The Concept of Citizenship through the Ages, Rome 2016).
She serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including Mediterraneo Antico, Thiasos. Rivista di archeologia e architettura antica, The Historical Review of Sparta, Archaeology of Western Anatolia, and Quaderni di Architettura e Design. Her professional career has also included research on European cultural policies and on the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage on behalf of the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, where she served for more than a decade.