Rome

Rome begins with a ruin: the remains of the Temple of Vespasian, its ancient stones set against a city still in motion.

Published in 1914, Fred Richards’s sketch-book follows Rome through its layered streets and open spaces, from the Forum and the Pantheon to St. Peter’s rising beyond the Tiber. Its brief captions guide the eye among temples, churches, arches and the quieter reaches beyond the city, where Tivoli’s ravine and the Alban Mountains offer another kind of view. Here, the past is not sealed away: it stands beside the modern city, inviting a closer look at what time has left behind—and what it has made of it. What might the next view reveal?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.