Travel, imaginary and iconography of the city in the tourist posters between ‘800 and ‘900

The tourist posters and postcards accompanied, often with interesting graphic experiments, the birth and transformation of resorts, witnessing the evolution of buildings and landscapes, but also of people tastes and customs. Most probably, the first advertising image related to an hotel dates back to 1900 and was printed by the illustrious Swiss editor Richter & Co, who produced chromolithographs in his laboratory in Naples since 1842. Under the artistic guidance of Mario Borgoni, the Richter & Co created an extraordinary number of promotional images of various Italian and international resorts, whose analysis is a precious opportunity to retrace the history of the Mediterranean imaginary, related to a new idea of travel and to the emerging phenomenon of tourism. It is a particular point of view, that allows to investigate the evolution, through a significant period of time (the Richter & Co was active until the fifties), not only of the idea of advertising promotion, but also of the city iconography and the related imaginary.