Kim's Review : Rome. . . Past and Present

I first saw this book, when Michael, the owner of the beautiful guest house that we stayed in, in Rome - Pensione Barrett gave us his book to browse through and immediately, I fell in love with the USP of this series.

While R A Staccioli's book - Rome. . . Past and Present - does cover a lot of history and detail, the best part of it are the photographs. So while it has the standard photograph of what the site looks like at present, it aslo has a transparent sheet on top which has details printed on it that superimposes on the picture of the present, to give you an idea of how it could have looked like in the past.

The idea is simply brilliant and I wonder how long it will take to get similar books made for India. Given that we still don't have decent quality representative souvenirs available at our major monuments (magnetic stickers, keyrings, etc), I guess these books will take a long time too and I'm sure a 100 people across the country will jump up and find something in the imagined reconstruction that will "hurt their sentiments"

The monuments covered in this book are mostly from Ancient Rome, except for the last few pages which cover St Peters Basilica and Christian Rome.

There is also a beautiful CD which comes with the book that provides even more rich detailing of the period and the buildings.

Kids of all ages would love this book, for the pictures and the information.

It comes in multiple languages. What I bought in Italy is published by "Vision", but I see that flipkart sells a version by "Frommers" that looks very similar.

Rating : 4 / 5