The Italian School of Archaeology at Athens (Italian: Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene (SAIA); Greek: Ἰταλικὴ Ἀρχαιολογικὴ Σχολὴ Ἀθηνῶν) is one of the 19 foreign archaeological institutes headquartered in Athens, Greece, with branch offices in Crete, Limnos and Rome.
Following earlier Italian research in Greece (as an archaeological "expedition" or "mission"), the School was established in 1909.
It has conducted archaeological surveys in Aigialeia (Arcadia) and Thouria (Messenia), and excavations on Lemnos at Poliochne, Hephaistia, and Chloe, as well as on Crete, at the Minoan Palace at Phaistos and the nearby Minoan town of Agia Triada, and also in the Archaic through Roman city of Gortyn.
[1] In 1884, when students of the third year of the Specialization School of Rome had already been conducting research in Greece, Federico Halbneer, a student of Domenico Comparetti, initiated the first modern Italian archaeological season in Greece with the discovery of the Gortyn Code.
It replaced the previous Italian archaeological mission of Crete established ten years earlier.