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Piranesi’s plan of the Roman Forum is one of his most careful undertakings, as he attempted to depict the archaeology of the ancient city’s main civic space. A detailed topographical index followed the print in the first volume of the Antichità Romane, and he indicates which structures were still standing in his own day by marking their walls with darker lines. As Piranesi’s own understanding of the archaeology grew, alterations were made to the copper-plate in order to correct more recent developments, such as the changes to the carceres of the Circus Maximus. The plan is presented as though a fragment of the Forma Urbis, the colossal ‘marble map’ of Rome that was first discovered in 1562, and which Piranesi’s contemporary and colleague, Giovanni Battista Nolli was in the process of mounting on the stairway of the new Capitoline Museums. Although presented as an archaeological plan, closer inspection reveals the degree of artistic licence and imagination that Piranesi employed; the Temple of Venus and Rome, for example, is placed along the same axis as the Basilica of Maxentius in order to create a vast complex that has no basis in the ancient reality. The axis and scale of part of the Domus Aurea, which is then attached to the Colosseum, is similarly problematic. Piranesi’s map of the Forum was a contribution to contemporary dialogue regarding topographical discussions of the ancient city, and represents an imaginative redesign of Rome, based on his understanding of what could - or should - have been.

Pianta dell’antico Foro Romano from Antichità  Romane, volume I, plate XLIII
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