Maraffa was born in Biljana, present-day Slovenia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), on December 20, 1890, the son of career soldier and oil prospection entrepreneur Cataldo Rocco, from Ceglie Messapica, and Carlotta Giuseppina Gallin, from Udine.

He began his military career in the Royal Italian Army with the rank of artillery second lieutenant, on October 16, 1911.

In 1936, after promotion to Colonel, he was assigned to the Royal Academy of Turin, but in January 1937 he left the Army and was given command of the newly established Italian Africa Police (PAI), with the rank of Major General.

[3][4] After the German takeover, on 13 September 1943 General Maraffa assumed command of all the police forces of the Open City of Rome, with full powers for the maintenance of public order; he welcomed hundreds of officers and soldiers of the dissolved Royal Italian Army units into his police force, thus preventing their deportation to Germany as Italian Military Internees.

After the establishment of the Italian Social Republic, however, he refused to swear loyalty to the new Fascist puppet state and was therefore arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died less than two months later, on 11 December 1943, after suffering a heart attack.