Introduction: The Architecture of Your Story
Every leader is, at heart, an architect. Before you build a bridge, a business, or a movement, you must first design the invisible structures of belief, vision, and possibility. I am Peter de Kuster, and I invite you to join me in Rome—a city where the ruins of the past rise up to meet the dreams of the future, and where the story you tell yourself is the foundation for all that you create.
Our guide on this journey is Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Architect, engraver, visionary—Piranesi arrived in Rome as a young man with a restless imagination and a hunger to see beyond the surface of things. His journey is not just a tale of etchings and ruins, but a lesson in leadership: how the story you tell yourself can transform obstacles into opportunities, and how your vision can turn the fragments of history into a blueprint for greatness.
As you follow Piranesi’s footsteps through Rome, you will discover not only the monuments he immortalized in copperplate and ink, but the inner landscapes he explored—his doubts, his ambitions, his relentless pursuit of meaning. And, as you stand in the places where he sketched and dreamed, you will be invited to reflect on your own journey as a leader: What is the architecture of your story? What city are you building within yourself?
The Call to Rome
In the mid-18th century, Rome was a city of contradictions: ancient and modern, decaying and resurgent, a crossroads for artists, scholars, and seekers from across Europe. Piranesi arrived from Venice, drawn by the legends of antiquity and the promise of inspiration. He was a young architect with few prospects, but with a mind ablaze with images—arches and vaults, bridges and prisons, visions of grandeur rising from the dust.
Piranesi’s call to adventure was not a summons from a patron or a pope, but an inner compulsion—a need to see, to know, to reimagine the world. He wandered the streets of Rome, notebook in hand, mesmerized by the ruins of the Forum, the broken aqueducts, the mysterious catacombs. To most, these were reminders of loss and decline. To Piranesi, they were invitations: What if you could see not only what was, but what could be?
Every leader knows this call. It is the moment you realize that your work is not just about what exists, but about what you dare to envision. Piranesi could have told himself that he was simply a recorder of ruins, a chronicler of decline. Instead, he chose to believe that he could reveal the hidden grandeur of Rome—and in doing so, reveal the hidden grandeur within himself.
Crossing the Threshold
Piranesi’s first years in Rome were difficult. He struggled to find commissions, to make his voice heard among the chorus of artists and architects. The city was overwhelming—its history immense, its present uncertain. Yet Piranesi was undeterred. He began to sketch obsessively, filling page after page with studies of arches, columns, and crumbling walls. He saw not just decay, but possibility; not just fragments, but the seeds of rebirth.
This was Piranesi’s threshold, the point of no return. To cross it meant to risk obscurity, to face the skepticism of critics and the indifference of patrons. But Piranesi had discovered something vital: the story you tell yourself about your circumstances is more powerful than the circumstances themselves.
He began to etch his visions onto copper plates—images that were at once faithful to the ruins and wildly imaginative. His “Vedute di Roma” (Views of Rome) became legendary, not because they depicted the city as it was, but because they revealed what it could mean. In every shadow, every broken column, Piranesi saw the possibility of transformation.
As you stand today in the Museo di Roma, where many of Piranesi’s original prints are displayed, you can feel the energy of his vision. He was not content to document the world; he wanted to reinvent it.
Trials and Temptations
No leader’s journey is without struggle. Piranesi faced rejection, poverty, and the constant temptation to give up his dreams for more practical pursuits. He was criticized for his extravagance, his refusal to conform, his insistence on seeing Rome not as it was, but as it might be.
In these moments of darkness, Piranesi returned to his story. He remembered the canals of Venice, the first time he saw the play of light on water and stone, the thrill of imagining a city that could rise from the marshes. He told himself, “I am more than my failures. I am here to create.”
Every leader faces such trials. The world will test your resolve, question your vision, tempt you to abandon your dreams. The story you tell yourself in these moments—whether of defeat or of possibility—will determine the city you build within.
The Mentor and the Muse
In Rome, Piranesi found mentors in the ruins themselves. He studied the works of ancient architects, the writings of Vitruvius, the fragments of lost civilizations. He listened to the whispers of the stones, the stories etched in marble and brick. He learned that leadership is not just about building new structures, but about listening to the wisdom of the past.
He also found muses in the people he met—fellow artists, scholars, travelers from distant lands. Their stories, their questions, their dreams helped him to see his own work in a new light. Piranesi’s greatest lesson was humility: to learn from everything and everyone, to let the city itself become his teacher.
Revelation: The City Within
As Piranesi’s reputation grew, he was commissioned to create ever more ambitious works—fantastical prisons, imaginary reconstructions, visions of Rome as it might have been and might yet become. In these works, he discovered a new story within himself: that the true city is not built of stone, but of imagination, courage, and the willingness to see beyond the visible.
He realized that every leader is an architect of possibility. The city you build within yourself—your beliefs, your values, your vision—will shape the world you create for others.
The Place: Museo di Roma and the Aventine Hill
To experience Piranesi’s journey for yourself, I invite you to the Museo di Roma, where his prints and sketches are preserved, and to the Aventine Hill, where he once stood to draw the city’s sweeping vistas. Here, surrounded by the echoes of his vision, you can pause and ask: What is the architecture of my story? What city am I building within?
In these extraordinary spaces, you will find not only the legacy of Piranesi’s journey, but the inspiration to begin your own.
An Invitation to Your Own Hero’s Journey
Piranesi’s story in Rome is not just history; it is a living invitation. As you walk through the Museo di Roma, as you gaze out from the Aventine Hill, you are invited to become the architect of your own journey.
Leadership is not about certainty, but about vision—the courage to believe in your own story, to see possibility in ruins, to create something that lasts. The story you tell yourself is your greatest power. Use it well.
So I ask you: What story will you tell? What city will you build? The adventure awaits—in Rome, in the Museo di Roma, in your own heart.
The Hero's Journey in Rome 