Luigi Antonio Melchiorre Balugani was born in Bologna on 14 January 1737. Luigi began drawing at an early age and apparently with much promise, producing ornamental designs and developing a strong desire to study architecture. He begged his father to find him a good master and was apprenticed to Giuseppe Civoli, the Bolognese painter and professor of architecture at the Accademia Clementina, the Bolognese academy of art. Balugani left Rome on 9 February 1765, sailing from Leghorn to Algiers, where he arrived on 20 March.

He seems to have kept up a regular correspondence with his old patron, Marchese Ranuzzi, with Count Casali as secretary of the Accademia Clementina, and with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances.