Antique & Vintage Postcards

Sunlight dazzles off the cascading tiers of Rome's Fontana delle Naiadi in this vivid 1966 chrome postcard of the Piazza Esedra — gilded Nereids and sea-horses frozen mid-splash around the central jet while the sweeping colonnade of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and the roof of Roma Termini station loom in the background, anchoring a city in modernizing transition. Millie — the same tireless traveler who sent the Milan Duomo card earlier in the same July trip — dashed off an enthusiastic note to Joe, David, and Jerry back in Akron, Ohio, recounting the morning's Vatican tour: St. Peter's Square, the Vatican Museum, the fountain on the card, and the deflating news that the Pope was at Castel Gandolfo and unavailable. A sweet postscript promises an outdoor opera that evening. The card bears two Vatican City stamps — a 90-lire Poste Vaticane and a 30-lire Paulus VI commemorative — a philatelically attractive combination cancelled at Rome.