Antique & Vintage Postcards

Two jewel-box souvenir booklets that once slipped into a traveler's coat pocket on the Spanish Steps — "Ricordo di Roma" Parts I and II, each a compact accordion-fold leporello of albumen or collotype photographs presenting Rome's grandest monuments in sumptuous black-and-white detail. Part I, bound in vivid red-and-blue ornamental boards with a circular vignette of St. Peter's Square, unfolds to reveal views including the Colosseum exterior ("Colosseo Restaurato") and a dramatic engraved interior scene of the gran caccia alle fiere — the wild beast hunts staged in ancient times. Part II, in complementary red-and-gold boards centered on the Altare della Patria (Vittoriano), presents a matching suite. The backs of each booklet show the Arch of Constantine and Castel Sant'Angelo respectively, framed in ornate chromolithographic borders with a publisher's monogram medallion. These "Ricordo" leporello booklets were produced in vast quantities for the Grand Tourist and early mass-tourism trade from roughly the 1890s through the 1920s, yet complete matched pairs in presentable condition are increasingly scarce.