Sign-In
Cart
Painted Postcards: Italy: An Illustrated History
Paperback
General ArchitectureItalyItalian History
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.95
Height: 0.33 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.00
Language: English
Fifty towns, and how they got that way.
Why does a town as small as Lucca have walls that big? It built them against Florence, spent a fortune it barely had, was never attacked, and now has the finest intact Renaissance walls in Europe with a footpath on top.
Fifty towns, fifty versions of that question. Not what a place looks like, which the painting already tells you, but how it came to look like that.
Siena began the largest cathedral in Christendom and stopped halfway because half its people had died, and the wall of the unbuilt nave still stands open to the sky. Palermo spent a century as a Norman kingdom governing in Arabic, Greek and Latin at once. A pope demolished his birthplace and rebuilt it as an ideal city in four years. Matera was emptied by law in 1952 as a national disgrace and was European Capital of Culture in 2019. And the cathedral at Siracusa is a Greek temple from the fifth century BC whose columns are still holding the roof up, after the Byzantines walled them in, the Arabs made it a mosque and the Normans made it a church again.
Six sections run north to south, from the Alps to Sicily and Sardinia, and each one carries an argument: the north was ruled from abroad and then organized the country, the northeast faced east toward Constantinople, Tuscany looks medieval because it stopped, and the further south you go the less of Italy was ever governed from Italy at all.
Inside:
- Fifty full-page original paintings, in color
- Six essays covering the Alps to the islands
- Town histories researched from the record, not from the legend
- Disagreements between sources left standing rather than smoothed over
A word on what this is. These are not scans of old postcards. Every image is original artwork, painted for this book, of towns that have been photographed ten million times and painted almost never.
It is also not a guidebook. There are no opening hours here.
Painted Postcards is a series about places and how they came to look the way they do. Las Vegas is the first volume. Italy is the second.
Also in
Italian History
A Bite-Sized History of Italy: Gastronomic Tales of the Roman Empire, Renaissance, and Republic
Callegari, Danielle
Hardcover
The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors
Isserman, Maurice
Paperback
It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust
Bettina, Elizabeth
Paperback
The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza De' Medici
Lev, Elizabeth
Paperback
The Great Siege, Malta 1565: Clash of Cultures: Christian Knights Defend Western Civilization Against the Moslem Tide
Bradford, Ernle
Paperback
Life in Ancient Rome: Absorbing Social History--A Vivid Portrait of a Magnificent Age
Cowell, F. R.
Paperback
Terroni: All That Has Been Done to Ensure That the Italians of the South Became "Southerners"
Aprile, Pino
Paperback
This Earthly Globe: A Venetian Geographer and the Quest to Map the World
Di Robilant, Andrea
Paperback
Road to Valor: A True Story of WWII Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation
McConnon, Andres
McConnon, Aili
Paperback
In the Abruzzi: Travels in Southern Italy at the Turn of the 20th Century; The History, Culture and Folklore
MacDonnell, Anne
Paperback
Days of Memory: Listening to Jewish Italians who lived through Fascism and the Holocaust
Monachina, Judith
Paperback
Giorgia's Vision: Giorgia Meloni in Conversation with Alessandro Sallusti
Sallusti, Alessandro
Meloni, Giorgia
Hardcover
My Cousin the Saint: A Story of Love, Miracles, and an Italian Family Reunited
Catanoso, Justin
Paperback
The Pope and the Heretic: The True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man Who Dared to Defy the Roman Inquisition
White, Michael
Paperback
Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy Volume 28
Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta
Paperback
Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic
Stille, Alexander
Paperback
Rise and Fight: Speeches from the Italian Social Republic, and the Political Testament
Mussolini, Benito
Paperback
Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory
Mittelmeier, Martin
Paperback
Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean
Keahey, John
Hardcover
Aqua Tofana: Poison, Patriarchy, and the Women Who Chose Murder in Renaissance Italy
Lynn, Kathleen
Paperback
The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice
Ginzburg, Carlo
Paperback
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volumes 1 to 3 (of Six)(Box Set): Introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper
Gibbon, Edward
Hardcover
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style
Baxandall, Michael
Paperback
The Italian Way of War: A Short History from Garibaldi to Operation Husky 1866-1943
LaMonica, Jeffrey
Hardcover
The Brenner Assignment: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Spy Mission of World War II
O'Donnell, Patrick K.
Paperback
Learn Italian: A beginner's guide to learning basic Italian fast, including useful common words and phrases!
Alfaro, Adrian
Paperback
A Brief History of Italy: Tracing the Renaissance, Unification, and the Lively Evolution of Art and Culture
Haynes, Dominic
Paperback
A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Fascism
Moorehead, Caroline
Paperback
Murder in Matera: A True Story of Passion, Family, and Forgiveness in Southern Italy
Stapinski, Helene
Paperback
The Medicis and Borgias: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Medici Family and House of Borgia
History, Captivating
Hardcover
Churchill's Hellraisers: The Thrilling Secret Ww2 Mission to Storm a Forbidden Nazi Fortress
Lewis, Damien
Paperback
The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped
Strathern, Paul
Paperback
Across Sicily with Garibaldi's Thousand: An Adventure in Landscape and Italian Memory
Parks, Tim
Hardcover
The Beauty and the Terror: The Italian Renaissance and the Rise of the West
Fletcher, Catherine
Hardcover
Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory
Mittelmeier, Martin
Hardcover
Jews and the Italian Left: Socialism, Zionism, and Antisemitism from 1892 to 1992
Tarquini, Alessandra
Hardcover
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Modern Abridgment by Moses Hadas
Gibbon, Edward
Paperback
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
Kertzer, David I.
Paperback
This Earthly Globe: A Venetian Geographer and the Quest to Map the World
Di Robilant, Andrea
Hardcover
The Italian Invasion of Ethiopia: A Captivating Guide to Mussolini's War in Abyssinia
History, Captivating
Hardcover
Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes, the Kings, and Garibaldi's Rebels in the Struggle to Rule Modern Italy
Kertzer, David I.
Paperback
Sicily's Rebellion against King Charles: The Story of the Sicilian Vespers by John of Procida
Mendola, Louis A.
Paperback
Old Calabria: Travels Through Historic Rural Italy at the Turn of the 20th Century
Douglas, Norman
Paperback
The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Greed, Violence and Depravity in an Age of Beauty
Lee, Alexander
Paperback
The Italian Tradition of Equestrian Art: A Survey of the Treatises on Horsemanship from the Renaissance and the Centuries Following
Tomassini, Giovanni Battista
Paperback
The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
King, Ross
Hardcover
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance
Menzies, Gavin
Paperback
Holy War: The Untold Story of Catholic Italy's Crusade Against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
Campbell, Ian
Hardcover
The WWII Bombing of Bari, Italy: The Classified Disaster and Coverup That Launched the Discovery of Chemotherapy
Depaul Lupiano, Vincent
Paperback
Saving Michelangelo's Dome: How Three Mathematicians and a Pope Sparked an Architectural Revolution
Kalayjian, Wayne
Hardcover
The Great Siege of Malta: The Epic Battle Between the Ottoman Empire and the Knights of St. John
Allen, Bruce Ware
Paperback