Piranesi’s challenge: Rethinking the origins of European architecture

Abstract

Italian architect archaeologist and scholar Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a prolific Enlightenment figure who produced an elaborate series of drawings and etchings to support his following argument on the origins of European architecture: Roman architecture derived not from the Greek but from the Etruscan which according to him derived from Egypt. Based on his meticulous archaeological examinations in excavations he developed a history of architecture that was not based on the East-West division and the separation of the continents. However Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s approach rooting the origin of Roman architecture in the Greek came to dominate the standard history of architecture and Piranesi was misinterpreted both in his day and posthumously. The posthumous codification of architectural history excluded Piranesi from the standardized progress of architectural history in the West and resulted in his identification by idiosyncrasy. Therefore this work is an attempt to restore his argument to architectural history. © 2025 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.