Since the Renaissance, a tour of Italy has been an essential stage in the apprenticeship of artists. Starting in the mid 1840s, Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, Pompeii and many other places attracted painters, sculptors, architects, and photographers, who set up temporary residence there or even opened their own studios. Their reasons for doing so were varied: some attempted to preserve the memory of sites they feared might disappear; others had a more commercial interest, with scientists, archaeologists, and artists photographing the principal monuments and sites likely to interest particular clients. As tourism developed, the desire of travelers to take back souvenirs of the places they visited also grew, multiplying the number of pictures of churches, villas, fountains, etc., that were sold either singly or in album sets.

This book presents a selection of the numerous and varied photographic collections in the Musee d'Orsay, including calotypes by Frederic Flacheron and Alfred-Nicolas Normand, and prints by the greatest names in Italian photography, among them Alinari, Altobelli, Brogi, Caneva, MacPherson, Naya, Noack, and Pont. There are albums dedicated to views of Venice published by Ferdinando Ongania, pictures taken by the pictorialist photographers Edward Steichen and Constant Puyo, and others by amateur photographers like the Duke of Orleans.