The three volumes of the Antichita romane mark Piranesi's transition, at age 35, from the world of the veduta to that of reconstructive archaeology. Many antiquarians before him, Calvo, Duperac, Donati and especially Ligorio, had tried to piece together an image of ancient Rome, working with the evidence of texts and coins as well as a few major monu- ments. But the results were a jumble of fantastic reconstructions and repetitive infill without any clear sense of spatial planning.
Piranesi had one incalculable advantage over his predecessors, namely the accurate plan of modern Rome prepared by Giovanni Battista Nolli in 1736-1744 and finally published in 1748. Piranesi was in fact the engraver of the smaller version of the Nolli plan. But Nolli also helped Piranesi in another unac- knowledged way. In r742 he was charged by Pope Benedict XIV with the transfer of the fragments of the Severan marble plan, the so-called Forma Urbis, from Palazzo Farnese to the Capitoline Museum. The brass scale of 8o ancient Roman feet that Nolli devised to accompany the fragments was ungraciously criti- cized by Piranesi ("sembra essere opera di Professore inesperto, fatta senza intelligenza"), nevertheless, the new attention paid to the marble plan was critical for Piranesi's work. He published the major fragments in the first volume of the Antichita, recording the impres- sion they made upon him of a city "more clogged than adorned by splendid buildings." He attempted to assign more fragments of the plan to specific sites than had any previous topographer. And finally his own reconstructions of large parts of the ancient city, the baths, the camp of the Pretorian Guard, the Capi- tol, the Fora and finally years later the Campus Mar- tius were always presented under the fiction of fragments: large and detailed, but incontestably authentic.
One of the most impressive plates of Volume I of the Antichita, almost a meter tall, is the magnificent Tavola degli acquedotti, which traces for the first time the tortuous course of all the aqueducts through the city. In it Piranesi combines sharp observation of the ruins with a close reading of the text of Frontinus. The plates of Volumes II and III dwell on sepulchral monuments, especially those along the Via Appia, which is reconstructed in the fantastic frontispiece to Volume II. Piranesi combines the use of vedute with renderings of exact archaeological detail; this method allows the reader the thrill of a rapid visit along with the clarity of prolonged study. Some of the plates show feats of ancient engineering with a soaring imagination, such as the tomb of Cecilia Metella, where Piranesi re-invents the huge tackle needed to hoist up the blocks "che sembrano fatte piu dalla Natura, che dall'arte."
In many cases Piranesi swept the traditional iden- tification of Roman monuments to the winds. For example, the basilica of Maxentius had been known to antiquarians for centuries as the Temple of Peace, but Piranesi, realizing that it could not be a conventional temple, turned it into the tablinium or vestibule of the Domus Aurea. Nero's dining room with its famous rotating vault is shown with the incredible diameter of 4oo palmi, equal to the length of the Basilica of Maxentius. Three flights of stairs, so big that a public street can pass under them, con- nect the Colosseum with the Domus Aurea and the Palatine with the Capitol.
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