If the sea and navigation were D’Albertis’s greatest passion, cultivated throughout his long life, there were many others, he was a man of great curiosity and was avid for news. So the photographs of his archive tell us of his holidays on the island of Giglio, where, with the Marquis Doria, he delighted in collecting specimens of fish and shellfish; they show us his days in Aosta Valley at the Hotel Giomein al Breuil, where Edmondo De Amicis also vacationed and from where Guido Rey left for his climb in the Alps; they testify to the restorative stays in Fiuggi at the time of the construction of the Grand Hotel and at the thermal baths of Bormio; meetings with friends in the hermitage built on the promontory of Capo Noli; the trip to Palestine and the shipwrecks of the time; they tell of his endless journeys - three times around the world, once around Africa and many others in Europe and Egypt - in which fearless motorists are shown hunched over with scarves and goggles attempting climbs hitherto reserved for horse drawn coaches, ladies wearing feathered hats climbing the pyramids and young women in Sardinian costumes carrying water between “nuraghe” and village festivals.

Then there are the first planes with their canvas wings, the three-wheeled motorcycles, the excavations in Egypt with Schiapparelli, the monuments in capitals and provincial towns, the International Fairs, picnics in the mountains, the sundials that he himself designed for squares, barracks, hotels and spas.

And the wooden trunk continues to amaze and arouse our curiosity as we extract the yellowed and aged envelopes that contain negatives, still in incredibly good condition, that bring back to life children and soldiers, countesses and commoners, divers and porters.