Six fluted Corinthian columns soar above a sunlit Forum square in what was then the Austro-Hungarian naval city of Pola (modern Pula, Croatia), their elaborately carved capitals and entablature frozen in a perfection that has survived two millennia — the Temple of Augustus, consecrated between 2 BC and AD 14 in honor of the first Roman emperor, here photographed by Alois Beer of Klagenfurt in one of his meticulously composed architectural studies. Fragments of Roman statuary are scattered across the temple platform behind a wrought-iron fence, while the medieval and Venetian-era buildings crowding the ancient precinct remind us of the layered centuries that have pressed against this monument. The bilingual back — Correspondenz-Karte / Cartolina postale — and the publisher's imprint of F. W. Schrinner, Pola, date this card precisely to 1908, deep in the twilight of Habsburg Adriatic power. Alois Beer (1840–1916) was one of the foremost photographers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his postcards are actively collected as photographic art objects in their own right.