Florence

A significant part of the hundred and eighty-seven postcards of Florence show exteriors and interiors of the city’s most emblematic monuments: the Ponte Vecchio, the Piazza della Signoria, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Medici Chapels, the Palazzo Pitti and Medici Riccardi, dell`Arte della Lana and di Parte Guelfa palaces, the delle Cascine and Boboli Gardens, and basilicas and churches like Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, the Duomo and the Santo Spirito. Another large group comprises postcards of sculpture and art objects in the museums and galleries visited: Pitti, Uffizi, Bargello, Accademia and Archaeological.

Some images are witness to the changes produced by the passage of time such as those of the Archaeological Museum’s Etruscan Topography Museum, destroyed by the 1966 flood of the Arno, or the different appearance of the present-day Piazza della Repubblica, previously called Vittorio Emanuele II.

Although some were taken by Emilio Camps and mounted on a backing in pairs, most are commercial, by Florentine publishers.

Those of the Archaeological Museum are all by the famous firm Alinari, others are by the also renowned Alterocca di Terni and a few others are, unusually, colour reproductions, mainly paintings from the Palazzo Pitti and Galleria degli Uffizi, by Eliotipia Roberto Hoesch, L. Pistone and Fotoedizioni Brunner & C. Finally, to a lesser extent, the publishers A. Traldi, E. Perugi, P. Giusti & Figli, R. Privativa, A. Sorocchi and F. Pineider are also represented. According to the journal, the postcards by the latter were bought directly from its shop founded in 1774.