Imagine visiting Italy’s romantic capital without being jostled by endless crowds of tourists or having to put up with chaotic road traffic. Well, there are two ways in which you can do this: 1. catch a ride on a machine that travels through time alla H.G. Wells, or 2. enjoy a collection of beautiful photographic postcards from the late 1800’s.

Rome – View from the Palatino.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet finished building my time machine down in the shed at the bottom of the garden, so I guess we’ll have to use option two for now dear readers.
Here’s an interesting article from the Italian on-line journal Il Post with my translation into English. Check it out, then allow yourself to wander through those ancient street and dream of times long passed.

Il sito Mashable ha messo insieme delle vecchie cartoline di Roma che si possono trovare sul sito della Library of Congress, la biblioteca del Congresso americano di Washington, che è la più grande del mondo e ha digitalizzato buona parte del suo materiale, a disposizione di tutti.

The website Mashable has put together some old postcards of Rome that can be found on the Library of Congress website. The library of the American congress in Washington is the largest in the world and it has digitalised a large part of its material and made it available to everyone.

Rome – The Colosseum with the Meta Sudans

Le cartoline risalgono tutte circa al 1890 e sono state sviluppate con la tecnica della fotocromia, la prima che permise di ottenere immagini a colori a partire da un negativo in bianco e nero. Il processo – che fu inventato nel 1880 da Hans Jakob Schmid, un impiegato dell’azienda di stampe svizzera Orell Gessner Füssli – è abbastanza complesso, ma il risultato è molto realistico: ci sono belle foto di tutte le cose da turisti che si possono vedere a Roma, dal Colosseo a Piazza Navona, la Basilica di San Paolo e la Fontana di Trevi.

The postcards are from around 1890 and were developed with the photochrom technique, the first method that allowed colour images to be obtained from a black and white negative. The process – which was invented in 1880 by Hans Jakob Schmid, an employee of the Swiss printing company Orell Gessner Füssli – is quite complex, but the result is very realistic: there are beautiful photos of all the tourist attractions that one can see in Rome, from the Colosseum to Piazza Navona, the Basilica di San Paolo and la Fontana di Trevi.

To view the rest of these lovely postcards click HERE

Now, time to get back to work on that time machine. I’ll let you all know when it’s ready, va bene?