Roma - Vintage Italian Souvenir Photo Album c. 1900, with 50 images. Grand Tour album from Rome.
Roma – Souvenir Album of Photographic Views
Rome, c.1900.
Landscape format (165 × 253 × 30 mm), publisher’s decorative red cloth, upper cover blocked in gilt “ROMA” within black ornamental border. Contains 50 mounted gelatin silver photographs, each approximately 100 × 149 mm, showing principal monuments, churches, ruins, city views of Rome, and significant artworks.
Each photograph with a printed caption strip: “Edizione inalterabile” at lower left, subject title at centre, and catalogue number at lower right. Views include the Colosseum (interior and exterior), St. Peter’s Basilica and Piazza, the Forum Romanum, the Capitoline, Piazza Colonna, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Pyramid of Cestius, aqueducts, and many other major sites.
The photographs are glossy and well preserved, with excellent tonal range and detail; many show the characteristic bluish metallic sheen at the edges typical of early gelatin silver prints (silver mirroring). The album is a purpose-made tourist production, intended for the European travel market at the turn of the century.
Although the album carries no explicit imprint, the caption style and numbering system are closely related to the productions of leading Italian photographic publishers such as Fratelli Alinari (Florence, active also in Rome) and Carlo Brogi (Florence/Rome), both of whom marketed extensive catalogues of Roman views in this period. Other Roman firms, including Giacomo Brogi, Anderson, and Danesi, also issued albums under the label “Edizione inalterabile”. The consistent typography and numbering here suggest manufacture by one of these large studios supplying the Grand Tour market around 1895–1910.
Condition: Binding rubbed and slightly faded, but sound and presentable. Prints clean and bright. Some light spotting and minor age toning to mounts. A complete set of 50 photographs.
A substantial Roman souvenir album in unusually good condition, distinguished by containing true photographic prints rather than the more common collotype reproductions.
Weight approximately 900g (unpacked).