Piranesi’s interest in Roman antiquity, though concentrated on its architecture, also included domestic and ornamental objects. Late in his career, and with the help of sculptors and engravers, he freely “restored” recently discovered antiquities and then produced over 100 etchings indicating their provenance and acquisition.

Piranesi’s Antichità Romane is a four-volume work whose images depict ruins, tombs, bridges, and masonry in vedute, plans, cross-sections, and close-ups. This image depicts the sepulchral chamber of freedmen and domestic slaves who labored for Lucius Arruntius.

This composite image assembles Ionic column capitals from various buildings in Rome in order to argue for the superiority and the magnificence of Roman as opposed to Greek architecture. His argument relies on fragments of texts and buildings. Visual citations and architectural details serve as his bibliographical and graphical evidence.

Veduta della fonte e delle Spelonche d’Egeria fuor della porta Capena or di San SebastianoIn this view, Piranesi depicts the sacred fountain grotto associated with Egeria, the water nymph who was thought to have advised Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. For subsequent generations of artists and writers, the grotto represented the return to a natural state after neglect an

Known as the Porta Maggiore or Porta Prenestina, this magnificent gate lies at the convergence of eight aqueducts and two ancient roads. In the full title of the image, Piranesi explains that this monument was erected by Titus Vespasian to commemorate the restoration of two aqueducts—the Anio, or Aniene nuovo, and Claudia.

This engraving depicts a ruined architectural interior that opens to the sky even as it is emphatically enclosed by successive archways that are overgrown with draping vines.

This fantastical image is an imaginative reconstruction of the Circus Maximus, a lost ancient site devoted to public spectacle.

This etching includes a prominent instance of the architectural impossibilities that appear throughout the Carceri. “The Gothic Arch,” the title bestowed by later scholars, refers to the pointed arch that nearly meets the upper margin of the image.