Camille de Tournon-Simiane

Comte (Philippe-Marcellin) Camille[1] de Tournon-Simiane (1778 – 18 June 1833) was a French bureaucrat, a chambellan of Napoleon I who served the Emperor as Prefect of Rome (6 September 1809 – 19 January 1814), and with the Bourbon Restoration served as Prefect of the Gironde at Bordeaux (25 July 1815 – 4 February 1822[2]) and briefly of the Rhône at Lyon (1822 – January 1823[3]).

He emigrated and after his return devoted seven years to polishing his interrupted studies, beginning his public career modestly in 1802 as secretary to the commission that was charged with working out the Napoleonic Code rural.

By a decree of the Emperor, 1811, one million francs were provided to finance excavation and conservation works at Rome, of which Tournon-Simiane was in charge.

Conservation works in the Roman forums from the Campidoglio to the Colosseum, were published in his Etudes Statistiques, 1831, in which he provided an account of the aims and scope of excavations undertaken during his administration, contrasting it with the wholesale pillaging that had taken place in 1798, under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino.

A volume of fully 10 metres depth of earth was removed from the three columns of Vespasian's Temple of Jupiter Tonans.