ERITREA - Lot 133

ERITREA Album "Missione cattolica - Asmara" presenting views taken by the Catholic mission in Asmara, Eritrea, ca.1915. Photographs. Album of 32 vintage silver prints, some captioned in the negative below the image. Assab: commissariat and mission, Beggiuk woman, warrior-hunter, kitchen, mearists in Barentù, the vicar among the inhabitants of Hebo, Abyssinian children, Cunama woman and man, girls' hairstyles, Bilène man and smoker, Yemen woman, Cheren (Keren): panorama, police station, Agordat, Hamasian ox, armed warrior, preparing bread, polenta, repairing zeriba, grilling meat, Debarwa sycamore, first scarifications of a child, Baria men at well, men and children at Adi-Ugri fountain, military parade. Images: 10.3 x 16.7 cm to 16.2 x 21.7 cm Eritrea's Italian colony, Asmara had a population of up to 98,000, including 53,000 Italians. At the time, it was the main "Italian city" of the Italian colonial empire in Africa. Because of the architecture of the buildings, Asmara was called "Piccola Roma" (Little Rome), and the empire deployed its missionaries here. These photographs were later published as postcards in the 1930s.