Washerwomen on the banks of the Navigli, hairdressers in the Neapolitan squares of Santa Lucia, old trams in the center of Bologna. Sepia views, folded cards, wrinkles from the passing of time, pompous daguerreotypes, double photos for nineteenth-century stereovisors, Venetian promenades with umbrellas and bell-shaped skirts…
February 16th of this year the Alinari Archive, in transition from a private photographic licensing company to a public foundation, organized a press conference. In the newsrooms, including that of the site travelleaves.cloud dedicated to travel stories born recently, the press kit arrived populated by images of other times. In the midst of the pandemic, a crowd of yesteryear suggestions presented itself: in the meantime the real Italy, segregated at home by Covid, cultivated the desire for squares, beautiful villages, cocktails on the beach, little shops, colors, people, movement, in two words much of life, besieged by yellow, orange, red and lockdown zones.
Alinari archive 
Alinari archive
At that point in the small editorial staff of Foglieviaggi, edited by Vittorio Ragone, they had an idea: travel through the stories, memory and imagination at a time when real travel was precluded. Alinari shows a country where it will never be possible to go simply because that country no longer exists. Thus was born the project: "Italy, as it was". Ten great cities told by journalists and writers, but also and above all by the images provided by the Alinari Foundation, chaired by Giorgio Van Straten and directed by Claudia Baroncini.
Ten journalists have chosen the images from the galleries drawing from the endless Tuscan archives. Then they accompanied them with their lyrics. Thus were born "Roma, the vanished city" by Roberto Roscani; "Naples, faces and streets" by Marcella Ciarnelli, "Genoa and the port" by Roberto Orlando and then Bologna, Bari, Milan, Turin, Venice, Palermo and finally the parent company, Florence, accompanied by reflections and stories by Jenner Meletti, Maddalena Tulanti, Oreste Pivetta, Andrea Aloi, Nicola Fano, Enzo D'Antona and Franco De Felice.
The presentation was entrusted to Michele Smargiassi, journalist and photography expert, to the writer Federica Iacobelli and to Van Straten himself. Each gallery is accompanied by classical pieces - Bach, for everyone - or by melodies composed and performed ad hoc, selected and chosen by Adriana Tessier. Thanks to this work, until the summer, a piece of the country will be looked at as if in an antiqued mirror to enjoy the long national storytelling that is due to the Alinae, of which Foglieviaggi is an enthusiastic megaphone.
