Sweeping out from the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, Bernini's great colonnade embraces the famous elliptical piazza in this breathtaking aerial photograph taken from the dome — the Tiber curling through a still-compact Rome beyond, with the Castel Sant'Angelo visible in the middle distance. Printed by the respected Florentine publisher Cecami in 1934, this card belongs to a pivotal moment in Rome's visual history: Mussolini had recently begun cutting the Via della Conciliazione, which would soon erase the medieval borgo that still crowds the approach in this very image. The reverse, printed in Italian as "ROMA — Veduta dalla Cupola di S. Pietro," is crisp and clean; the card was never used, preserving the full visual impact of one of the twentieth century's finest postcard compositions.