Rome 1921

Rome has been painted a thousand times in golden sunshine and bustling crowds. Roger Broders, in his 1921 poster for the city, chose a quieter and stranger vision, and it is all the more memorable for it.

Broders constructs an imaginative, almost archaeological prospect of Rome, looking through the great Arch of Constantine toward the Colosseum beyond. The streets stand nearly empty, occupied only by a few wandering goats and a single solitary tourist. The effect is dreamlike: the viewer feels less like a sightseer in a busy capital and more like an explorer stumbling upon ancient ruins in a pristine, untouched landscape, a place frozen out of time and waiting to be rediscovered. That sense of solitary wonder is what lifts the design above ordinary tourism and gives it a lasting, almost poetic appeal.

Roger Broders (1883-1953) was one of the defining poster designers of the golden age of rail. His luminous images for the PLM railway lured travellers toward the Alps, the Jura and the Riviera, and his ability to compress monuments and vistas into flat, saturated planes of colour secured his place among the most collectable names of the period. He treated even a famous ruin as a fresh graphic problem to be solved with clarity and grace.

This Rome belongs to the Art Deco movement that flourished in 1920s France, a style built on speed, elegance and machine-age geometry. Deco artists pared their scenes down to bold, simplified forms, lending even an ancient ruin a crisp, modern glamour and a mood of confident optimism.

Shown at scale, a vintage lithographic poster becomes a genuine focal point. Its saturated palette and composed structure hold their own above a sofa, bed or console, anchor a gallery wall of mixed prints, and add colour, warmth and a sense of history to a living room, hallway, dining room, home bar, kitchen or studio.

Each print is produced to order on premium 189 gsm museum-grade archival matte paper with fade-resistant pigment inks, giving rich, gallery-quality colour and clean, precise detail. Pick your size from the drop-down menu: 8x12, 12x18, 16x24, 20x30 or 24x36 inches. Every order is carefully packaged and shipped rolled in a sturdy tube, with the smallest size sent flat; a frame is not included.

What arrives is a faithful fine-art reproduction of the original stone lithograph, colour-matched and printed to archival standards rather than a flat mass-market copy. It keeps the texture and character of the antique poster while reaching you crisp, clean and ready to frame. Reproduced from a high-resolution scan of the original, it retains subtle age-toning as part of its authentic historic character.

For the traveller, the classicist and anyone who loves vintage posters and Art Deco design, this evocative view of Rome makes a memorable gift and a lasting way to bring a piece of Italian travel art into a home, studio or workplace.