Axel Boëthius

Who was Axel Boëthius?

Axel Boëthius was a scholar and archaeologist of the Etruscan culture. Boëthius was primarily a student of Etruscan and Italic architecture. His father was the historian Simon Boëthius.

As a student, Boëthius studied at the Uppsala University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1918. He taught at Uppsala during which time he excavated at Mycenae in Greece. In 1925 he was selected as the first director of the Swedish Institute at Rome by the Swedish crown prince Gustav Adolf. He became professor of archaeology at the Göteborg University in 1934, a post he held until 1955. He also served as rector of the university. In 1955, he retired to Italy. There he published his book Golden House of Nero in 1960, which was the product of the Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures given in Rome. Boëthius, working together with John Bryan Ward-Perkins, wrote the section on Etruscan architecture for the prestigious Pelican History of Art series. The volume was published in 1970, shortly after his death in 1969.