GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI AND IL CAMPO MARZIO DELL’ANTICA ROMA

The analytical gaze with which Giovanni Battista Piranesi looks at Rome in the mid- 1700s, already visible in the vedute di Roma, is the conceptual core of Il Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, published by the Venetian architect in 1762. According to Piranesi Roman architecture is not a question of mere archaeology – or, better, what today archaeology is meant to be – but a living and real problem in the city of his time. Ruins are not urban relics to be preserved. Rather these singular elements are assigned the role of “premonitions of identity” of Rome and the very idea of the city that the Campo Marzio projects into the future.