On August 22, 1733, a customer walked into a print and book shop on Rome’s via del Corso. Some time later—and 38 ½ Juli (or Giuli) poorer—he or she came out with an armful of pictures of Rome’s magnificent cityscape, both ancient and modern. The nearly 200 prints in this compendium document palaces and fountains, columns and obelisks, sculptures on ancient monuments, and the elegant gardens that surrounded Rome’s great aristocratic villas. By a wide variety of artists, the prints in the book were all issued by the publishing firm established in the mid-1600s by Giovanni Domenico de Rossi. The de Rossi firm issued series after series of such views in the following decades, and would remain the leading publisher of such scenes into the 1750s. These prints, which were in some ways the (expensive) picture postcards of their day, were essential in spreading the fame of Rome’s cityscape across Europe. The prints in this volume found their way north to a collection in Milan. The prints in this volume, of varying quality and by a host of different artists, provide an excellent cross section of the sorts of images that found their way across Europe, influencing artists and architects, and luring the next wave of tourists --- grand or otherwise --- to the great city of emperors and popes.

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