Antique & Vintage Postcards

Palm trees sway along a sun-drenched Sicilian street as the glorious Baroque façade of the Cathedral of San Giorgio dominates the horizon in this evocative black-and-white view of Ragusa Ibla's Piazza Duomo — a scene that feels lifted from a golden-age Italian film set. Ragusa Ibla, the ancient lower quarter of Ragusa in southeastern Sicily, was rebuilt in the spectacular Sicilian Baroque style following the catastrophic earthquake of 1693, and the Duomo di San Giorgio — designed by Rosario Gagliardi and completed in 1775 — is considered one of the finest Baroque churches in Italy, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Figures in period dress stroll the piazza while shopfronts line the right side, offering a rare street-level social document of interwar Sicilian life. Published by the Studio Grafico Cesare Capello of Milan, whose vertical imprint appears on the verso, this card is an excellent representative of the halftone-printed Italian view card of the 1920s–30s.