The elective course Piranesi and the modern age only takes as a point of departure the enigmatic visions of the architect, archaeologist, designer and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78). The course does not focus on Piranesi directly, but on the rediscovery of him from 1900 onwards, across fields that include film, photography, painting, architecture, urbanism, literature and psychology. Together we shall explore each of these topics systematically and chart how our own period – to this very day – interprets Piranesi to formulate its novelty. The course invites you to participate on a ground-braking scholarly mission to uncover the strategies not of Piranesi, but of the modern age that exploits him; our weekly seminars investigate the works of pioneers such as Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud, the film director Sergei Eisenstein and architects ranging from Alessandro Limongelli and Aldo Rossi to Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman. Through a combination of lectures, discussions, and concrete assignments, we ambitiously aim to redraw the map of contemporary culture itself – and the surprise might be how much of it harks back to an 18th century Venetian etcher.