Antique & Vintage Postcards

A hauntingly atmospheric reproduction of Giovanni Battista Piranesi's celebrated etching fills this 1923 Roman postcard — the great circular Temple of Hercules Victor (long misidentified as the Temple of Cybele) rises above a bustling 18th-century streetscape in the Piazza Bocca della Verità, its ancient columns draped with laundry, ox-carts rolling past, tiny figures dwarfed by the sublime ruin. The card was mailed on April 30, 1923 — "Come Home" written at the top — by a traveler named Caroline who wrote to Mrs. Walter H. on Main Street, Hingham, Massachusetts: "We are going to be here in Rome. Beautiful place and glorious climate. Hope that you are all well. We are. Baby fine and grown very fat." The deckle-edged paper and rich intaglio reproduction give the card an almost print-quality gravitas rarely found in tourist ephemera of the era. Published by Brunner & C., Como — a respected Italian fine-arts publisher — this is a collector-grade item bridging the worlds of Grand Tour art history and personal correspondence.