The Via Sacra stretches into the haze of Roman antiquity in this razor-sharp real-photo postcard of the Forum Romanum — the ancient civic heart of the Roman Empire — captured by Rome's prolific commercial photographer Ernesto Richter (catalog no. 519). At right, the three surviving Corinthian columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux soar above the rubble field of the Basilica Giulia, while the Arch of Titus and the Palatine Hill dissolve into the background. The foreground is a glorious tangle of marble drums, column capitals, and brick stubs — the Forum as excavated archaeologists left it after the heroic clearances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Richter operated one of Rome's premier postcard photography studios from roughly 1895 to the 1930s, and his numbered real-photo series are actively collected by students of early Roman archaeology and grand-tour ephemera alike. The back is blank and unused, the standard divided-back with a handwritten price "100" at upper right (likely a dealer's pencil price). Condition: Very Good — crisp photographic detail, slight silvering at extreme edges on face, one faint stain verso.