Antique & Vintage Postcards

Two Edwardian ladies in long dark skirts and boater hats stroll a sun-drenched boulevard with a small dog on a lead — captured in a crisp early-1907 photograph at the entrance of Naples' beloved Villa Nazionale, the grand public park hugging the city's seafront. Ornate cast-iron lamp standards flank wrought-iron gates, and classical marble statues of draped figures stand sentinel atop high pedestals on either side of the entrance, while a grove of fan palms fills the middle distance with a distinctly Mediterranean lushness. The written message on the reverse, dated August 6, 1907, was penned by an unnamed traveller who had arrived from Rome the night before after a 5½-hour journey, noting Naples as "a big city" with grand boulevards and describing the Villa Nazionale's grounds as beautiful, its trees as enormous, and calling out "various statues" around the park — a vivid first-person account of the golden age of Italian grand tourism.