Pompei

Pompei (1971)
A cura di: Alfonso de Franciscis • Fotografie: Carlo Bevilacqua
Serie: I Documentari n. 15 • Editore: Istituto Geografico De Agostini S.p.A., Novara
ISBN: none (Vesuvius erupts, barcodes don’t)
Condition: Good (ash-free, plate-proud)
Imprint: Crappy Old Books

Presenting the most civilised walk through a disaster you’ll ever own: Pompei, the 1971 De Agostini album where archaeology meets Italian publishing efficiency. Alfonso de Franciscis (then Superintendent of the Excavations of Campania) conducts the tour; Carlo Bevilacqua supplies photographs that can smell a paving stone at twenty paces. It’s number 15 in the very serious, very handsome series I Documentari, overseen by the Boroli brothers with a managing editor named Emilio Borciani—because even ruins require paperwork.

Inside, the book does exactly what a time machine should. The Sommario promises:

• Le origini (before the Romans arrived with roads and receipts)

• Il periodo sannita and il periodo romano (from swagger to empire)

• I segni premonitori (no refunds), then La tragedia (hold on to your strigils)

• Il risveglio—archaeologists, picks, dust, delight

• La Pompei del I secolo d.C. (the neighbourhood tour: forum, bakeries, the house you’d like to steal)

• Fold-out Pianta di Pompei and a suite of Illustrazioni for pointing at while planning your escape route

Bevilacqua’s plates catch the drama without melodrama: deep-shadow streets, cart ruts like staff lines, frescoes behaving as if the party merely paused, and those famous stepping stones daring you to cross in unsuitable shoes. De Franciscis keeps the prose brisk—informative, unflustered, occasionally tender—like a guide who knows the guard and the dog.

Condition “Good” in our house style means the volume has been appropriately adored: jacket with honest rub and the odd nick, boards square, binding tight enough to survive a minor tremor, pages clean with the faintest ancient-site tan (think caffè latte, not tephra). No ash, no odour of catastrophe, only the respectable aroma of 1970s Italian printing.

Use cases (tested and approved):

• Coffee-table declaration that your taste runs to classics and catastrophes.

• A portable syllabus for anyone who thinks insula is a cloud and lararium a tropical fish.

• Colour planning: tufa grey, pompeian red, olive-wood brown, and sun-bleached travertine.

• Reading aloud the chapter on premonitory signs whenever your smoke alarm beeps.

Talking points for the dinner table (or forum):

• “Pompeii isn’t a ruin; it’s a paused municipality.”

• “The stepping stones are pedestrian crossings, not giant ravioli.”

• “Excavation is destruction—this book is the memory.”

• “If you can pronounce thermopolium, you’ve earned another glass.”

Physical particulars, candidly declared: dust jacket lightly edge-worn; spine lettering firm; pages bright, plates crisp; fold-out plan present; Italian throughout; printed in 1971 at Istituto Geografico De Agostini, Novara with the series badge I DOCUMENTARI 15 proudly in situ.

Ideal for: armchair archaeologists, Latin nostalgics, travellers who pack guidebooks even for the sofa, and anyone who enjoys a good before/after with two millennia between.

Crappy Old Books guarantee: we don’t sell mint; we sell storied. If you want Pompeii with authoritative text, clear plates, and just enough ash in the imagination, this is your souvenir that got out before the volcano misbehaved.

Keep browsing: See more Foreign books Other books by Alfonso de Franciscis