1796/7)[1] was an Italian priest and scholar, who invented a machine to unroll carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum in the 1750s,[2] and spent the years 1779-1795 recording the activity of Vesuvius in a diary, for Sir William Hamilton.

In 1752, the Villa of the Papyri was discovered in the city of Herculaneum, having been buried during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius.

The rolled papyri scrolls had been carbonised and then preserved by the hot volcanic deposits, and many efforts were made to try and unroll and decipher them.

From September 1779 to August 1795, Piaggio kept a series of diaries for Sir William Hamilton, in which he recorded daily observations and sketches of Vesuvius, which he could see from his residence at Madonna Pugliano near Resina, on the western side of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.

[10] The British Museum holds a drawing by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione that was once from Piaggio's collections.