postcard history museum

The Museum of the History of the Postcard is a specialised museum institution dedicated to the conservation and enhancement of illustrated postcards, a popular communication medium that from the nineteenth to the twentieth century accompanied travels, historical events, fashions and customs, becoming an extraordinary visual document of society and the urban landscape in transformation. The museum holds thousands of period postcards organised by themes: urban views of Verona and Italian cities, scenes of daily life, photographic studio portraits, patriotic postcards of the world wars, political propaganda, commercial advertisements, Christmas and Easter greetings, and Liberty and Art Deco artistic postcards. The permanent collections illustrate the technical and artistic evolution of the postcard: from the first simple postcards with Austrian postal stamp (1869) to the elegant colour chromolithographs of the years 1900-1920 with romantic subjects and picturesque landscapes, from the black-and-white photographic postcards of the 1930s-50s to modern contemporary glossy postcards.

Particular attention is paid to the Veronese postcards: views of the Arena, Piazza delle Erbe with the historic market, the Ponte Pietra before and after the war destructions, Castelvecchio, and scenes of city life that document a hundred years of urban and social transformations bearing witness to the disappeared Verona. The museum organises thematic temporary exhibitions on specific historical periods or types of postcards: postcards of the Great War with soldiers at the front and patriotic propaganda, Liberty postcards with floral illustrations by Marcello Dudovich, tourist postcards of the Dolce Vita of the 1950s-60s, and advertising postcards of historic Italian brands. Guided tours are available with experts in postal history, educational workshops for schools where students create personalised postcards with vintage techniques, and lectures with collectors who recount stories and curiosities hidden behind the images of vintage postcards.

The birth of the postcard and the technical evolution from the nineteenth to the twentieth century

The postal card was officially born in 1869 in Austria-Hungary as an economical support for short correspondence: a rectangular pre-printed card with space for address and postal stamp that cost less than a traditional letter in an envelope. The idea had immediate success spreading rapidly throughout Europe. In Italy the first postcards were issued in 1874 by the Kingdom with the effigy of Vittorio Emanuele II.

Initially the postcards were only textual, but soon private publishers began to print illustrations on the back: urban views, monuments, picturesque scenes that transformed the postcard into a collectible object and travel souvenir. The printing technique evolved rapidly: from the first chromolithographs in colour made with multiple lithographic plates that required successive prints for each colour, to the more economical black-and-white phototype of the 1920s-30s, to the modern colour offset techniques of the 1950s that allowed mass print runs at low cost. Postcards became the most popular visual communication medium of the twentieth century: millions of postcards were sent for greetings, travel salutations, family communications and political propaganda during the wars.

The Veronese postcards preserved in the museum document over a century of urban and social transformations of the city. The Liberty postcards of the early twentieth century show an Arena with surrounding buildings different from the current ones, Piazza delle Erbe still surrounded by medieval houses later demolished, the Ponte Pietra intact before the destruction of the Second World War, and scenes of daily life with carts pulled by horses, electric trams, women with long Victorian skirts and men with bowler hats walking along the Adige. Particularly precious are the postcards of the 1940s-50s that document the war destruction: bridges collapsed in the Adige after the bombings of 1945, rubble in the neighbourhoods hit by Allied air raids, and then the phases of reconstruction with scaffolding and cranes rebuilding the historic monuments.

These postcards are essential iconographic sources for architectural historians and urbanists studying the transformations of Verona. The museum collaborates with municipal archives and universities to digitise the historical postcards making them accessible to researchers and local history enthusiasts.

The Postcard Museum regularly organises thematic temporary exhibitions exploring specific aspects of the world of postcards: "Postcards from the Great War" with messages from soldiers at the front and patriotic propaganda that exalted heroism and sacrifices, "Liberty and Art Deco" with elegant illustrations by artists such as Marcello Dudovich and Leopoldo Metlicovitz, "La Dolce Vita on Postcards" with tourist scenes from the 1950s-60s showing the Italy of the economic boom, and "Vintage Advertising" with promotional postcards of historic brands Buitoni, Campari, Fiat. For schools educational workshops are organised where students learn Italian postal history, analyse the iconography of postcards to understand the mentality and values of past eras, and create personalised postcards with artisan techniques (watercolour, collage, stamps) experiencing the epistolary communication that preceded email and social media. The museum hosts meetings of philatelic collectors who exchange rare postcards, share knowledge about historical publishers, printing techniques, evaluation and conservation.

These events keep alive the passion for an object that today seems obsolete but which for decades was the protagonist of human communication and collective visual memory.