The book “Le fontane di Roma nelle piazze, e luoghi publici della città”
by Giovanni Battista Falda consists mostly out of illustrations. There isn’t
much text to describe them. This leads to the importance of the illustrations.
The text is located underneath the illustrations and can be understood as a
title, but they are very small in comparison to the image. In the text the construction itself, the
architect/designer and the location in the city of Rome are named. The name of
the construction is written in a bigger size than the rest of the information
which is located below.
On a double page, the left side is empty. All the content is situated on the right side. All the pages with content on it are numbered. The frontispiece of every chapter starts with the number “One” again. The number is always located in the under right corner of the images. It’s also the page with the most text on it. The typeface is very high, so a big font size, but still very thin.
The illustrations take the full-page. There are one or two illustrations which are on a foldout spread, but they’re still an exception. The reason for the foldout spread is the wide view angle of the image which doesn’t have enough space on a normal full-page. The illustrations are very detailed and we can see the surrounding with its vegetation too and even some people.
In my opinion the book by Giovanni Batista Falda isn’t meant to read. It’s meant to explore, to look at the images and to identify the details of the fountains in the city of Rome without travelling there.