Title: View of the Forum, Rome, Italy

Description

This photochrome print of the Roman Forum is part of “Views of Architecture and Other Sites in Italy” from the catalog of the Detroit Publishing Company (1905). Located between Palatine Hill and Capitoline Hill, the Forum was the nexus of political, business, and social life in ancient Rome. It contained a marketplace, temples, a senate house, and law courts. Visible on the left, on the west end of the Forum, are the massive ruins of the Temple of Saturn, the oldest temple in the Forum, dedicated to the Roman god of agriculture. The temple was consecrated in 498 BC, burned down by the Gauls in the early fourth century BC, and rebuilt in 42 BC under Lucius Munatius Plancus (circa 87 BC-15 BC). An inscription on the temple reads: "The Roman Senate and people restored what fire had consumed."

The Detroit Photographic Company was launched as a photographic publishing firm in the late 1890s by Detroit businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr., and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher. They obtained exclusive rights to use the Swiss "Photochrom" process for converting black-and-white photographs into color images and printing them by photolithography. This innovative process was applied to the mass production of color postcards, prints, and albums for sale to the American market. The firm became the Detroit Publishing Company in 1905.
Title from the Detroit Publishing Co., Catalogue J--foreign section, Detroit, Mich. : Detroit Publishing Company, 1905.
Print no. "1177".

Last updated: October 17, 2011