George Dennis (b. 21 July 1814 in Ash Grove, Hackney, Middlesex; d. 15 November 1898 in South Kensington, London) was a British tourist and explorer of Etruria; his written account of the ancient ruins of the Etruscan civilization is among the first of the modern era. Dennis was also an official of the British Excise Office. Hackney is the principal area of the London Borough of Hackney in East London. ... Middlesex is one of the 39 historic counties of England and the second smallest (after Rutland). ... November 15 is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 46 days remaining. ... The junction with Old Brompton Road and Pelham Street, outside South Kensington tube station. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... The area covered by the Etruscan civilzation. ...

Dennis travelled through Etruria between 1842 and 1847, in the company of artist Samuel Ainsley in 1842 and 1843. The result of his travels was his 1,085 page treatise Cities and cemeteries of Etruria, published in 1848 by the British Museum and including sketches by Dennis and Ainsley. Ostensibly a travelogue for the well-heeled Victorian tourist, Dennis' volume is much more, capturing the author's own diligence and erudition, and describing and contextualizing Etruscan ruins and Tuscan landscapes in able prose with scholarly detail. The centre of the museum was redeveloped in 2000 to become the Great Court, with a tessellated glass roof by Buro Happold and Foster and Partners surrounding the original Reading Room. ...

References

• Article by D.E. Rhodes in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• D. E. Rhodes, Dennis of Etruria: the life of George Dennis (1973)
• D. E. Rhodes, Dennis d'Etruria, trans. D. Mantovani (1992).
• Timothy W. Potter "Dennis of Etruria: a celebration", Antiquity 72 (1998), 916–21.

Timothy William Potter (born 1944; died January 2000) was a prominent archaeologist of ancient Italy, as well as of Roman Britain, best known for his focus on landscape archaeology. ...

External links

• Online text of Cities and cemeteries of Etruria[1]