Julia Vicioso

Julia Antonia Vicioso Varelas is a Dominican historian, preservationist, and former swimmer. After competing for the Dominican Republic in the 1979 Pan American Games, where she set national records in swimming, she studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña and the Sapienza University of Rome, before working as a professor in both institutions. A 1999 Guggenheim Fellow, she worked on the restoration of the San Pietro in Montorio while working at the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro. Biography Julia Antonia Vicioso Varelas was born in New York City on 19 May 1961.

In the 1979 Pan American Games, as part of the Dominican Republic's debut delegation, she competed in the 100 metre butterfly, 100 metre freestyle, 200 metre freestyle, and 400 metre freestyle. Although she was eliminated in the heats for all four events and ranked last place in the 100 metre butterfly and 200 metre freestyle, she set a national record in the latter (at 2:18.38) and the 100 metre freestyle (at 1:02.30);

She worked as an architect in Santo Domingo after her 1983 graduation from the Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU). Her 1993 doctoral thesis on the Basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Problemi di Lettura delle Superfici Architettoniche: Metodologia di Restauro per una fabbrica romana del Cinquecento, was supervised by . with this fellowship, she was able to travel to, among other places, the General Archive of the Indies for said research.

As an academic, she specializes in architectural history and conservation and restoration of immovable cultural property. She wrote several scholarly articles on Italian architecture and heritage restoration. One of the buildings she helped restore while working at the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro was San Pietro in Montorio. In 2014, she published the book Costanza Francini tra Artemisia Gentileschi e le Committenze della Compagnia della Pietà in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini a Roma.

She also works as a diplomat, having served as Permanent Representative of the Dominican Republic to the UN Agencies in Rome.