A promising discoverer: that's how Lorenzo Fortunati liked to call himself. He is mainly known due to the excavations he carried out in Rome between 1857 and 1858 on the Via Latina where, in addition to a series of burial structures, he also found the basilica of Santo Stefano Protomartire. The rest of his exploits, which involved numerous localities in Lazio, is little known to the archaeological bibliography which, with sporadic exceptions, has never given due consideration to this character. The conspicuous archival documentation concerning him makes it possible to trace the history of his discoveries and to get to know a man with a difficult life, struggling with economic difficulties and involved in diatribes with the Papal State, with local authorities and even with Marquis Giovanni Pietro Campana. The period photographs and the recovery of his excavation diaries reveal an extremely attentive personality in the details of the sites and finds under investigation and also make it possible to recover archaeological texts now forgotten under layers of concrete.