The Piranesi Award is the first international architectural award in the Republic of Slovenia. It was created as part of the Piran Days of Architecture international conference, and it is presented by the DESSA Gallery, the Coastal Galleries of Piran and the Piranesi International Jury. It was first presented in 1989 to the Serbian architect Bogdan Bogdanović for the Dudik Memorial Park in Vukovar, Croatia.

The award, named after the 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), whose family roots are said to be from Piran, rewards the best architectural realizations created in the last two years in the territory of Central European countries: Austria, Czech, Greece, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, Serbia joined in 2018, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2019, and Montenegro in 2020.

The projects that are exhibited at the Piranesi international exhibition as part of the PDA conference are chosen and nominated by the national selectors of the above-mentioned countries every year at the end of October. Each selector can nominate five projects.

Part of the exhibition for Piranesi Award is also an international (since 2008) student exhibition in which 21 European architectural faculties participate – Graz, Spittal, Vienna, Banja Luka, Mostar, Sarajevo, Split, Zagreb, Thessaloniki, Budapest, Ferrara, Pescara, Trieste, Podgorica, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Maribor, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, AA London. Student selectors of each faculty can nominate two projects designed in the last two academic years.

About 55 architectural realizations and 42 student projects compete for the Piranesi award. The prestigious Piranesi Award, two Piranesi Honorary Mentions and the Piranesi Student Honorary Mention are selected by an international Piranesi jury made up of that year’s PDA lecturers. The awards are presented by the honorary patron of the PDA conference.

The Piranesi Award was presented to diverse projects of various sizes and programs that reflect the relationship of modern architecture to the natural, cultural, historical and social context.