Old postcards, family photos, faded snapshots found in a drawer: small fragments of memory that tell us what San Vito Romano looked like before time changed its streets, squares and habits. On this page we collect vintage images of the town, to look at them together and rediscover familiar places through the eyes of those who lived there before us.
We open the gallery with a postcard of the Church of San Vito: the façade with its dome, the entrance doorway, the bare trees lining the avenue and the cobbled path rising towards the church, with a small figure standing in front of the steps.
The second postcard, in black and white, is titled after Theodoli Castle: in the foreground rises a brick bell tower with its bells in view and a spire topped by a cross, while at the end of the lane, between the stone walls, appear the round tower and the façade of the castle with its arched windows.
Seven postcards kept in an album now join the gallery. The oldest-looking one is a posted card with the handwritten note “da S. Vito Romano a Tivoli” (from San Vito Romano to Tivoli): it shows the town’s rooftops from above, the main street with passers-by and a church on top of the hill. Two postcards present San Vito as a “stazione climatica” (health resort) at 700 metres above sea level: in the first, in blue tones, three children walk hand in hand along a dirt road with the hilltop village in the background; in the second the view reaches the mountains known as the “Mammelle d’Italia”, beyond fields and trees.
Two postcards are devoted to Corso Mario Theodoli. One shows the signs of the Albergo Centrale - Ristorante Sallusti and of an ice-cream parlour, with potted plants lined up along the street; the other pictures the street in front of the Church of San Rocco, with its bell tower, the clock and a few men standing and chatting. The series ends with a “glimpse of the old town”, among stone houses, tiled roofs and an arched outdoor staircase, and a hand-coloured panorama, with houses on the slope and a road edged by a low wall.
The gallery will grow over time: if you have old photos or postcards of San Vito Romano and would like to share them, post them in the San Vito Romano Lovers Facebook group.