Emil Hübner, who was in the Arezzo library collecting inscriptions for Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (edited by Theodor Mommsen) introduced him to Wilhelm Henzen, and together they encouraged him to publish his first work, Le iscrizioni degli antichi vasi fittili aretini[1] (1859).
In his first effort he saved from dismemberment the great altar of Santa Maria della Pieve ad Arezzo, enclosing a painting by Vasari.
Bureaucratic frictions led him to resign his public duties, turn down a seat in archaeology at Bologna and retire to his depleted patrimony at Monte San Savino.
Gamurrini was from 1892 the director of the Biblioteca e Museo della Fraternita dei Laici d'Arezzo, where he found the opportunity to compile the Bibliografia dell'Italia antica (1905).
Gamurrini was a pioneer in this area: he published his work on the Etruscan site that became the Roman Imperial villa at Ossaia, a small suburb to the southeast of Cortona (Arezzo) in 1881.