Electa works with the Parco archeologico del Colosseo in the conception and publication of guides and information about the most important Italian archaeological heritage. This catalogue, which now includes hundreds of titles, is continually being enriched with numerous publications on the occasion of studies, research, excavations and restoration, reopenings of sites and the valorization of the cultural heritage.

The guides remain precious instruments for presenting the site and its museum collections concisely yet exhaustively. They are popular among visitors in Italy and from abroad thanks to their handy format, with clear and practical texts, richly illustrated, that offer a rapid approach to this immense heritage of art and culture. Issued in many languages, they come in two different formats and layouts.

The catalogues offer the most modern and up-to-date coverage of the very rich collections in the Park’s museums, the result of the most recent developments. These are catalogue-guides that include illuminating archaeological, historical-artistic and museographic essays entrusted to major specialists, followed by detailed information about all the works displayed and accompanied by an extraordinarily rich body of illustrations.

The exhibition catalogues contain essays and entries on individual works and are richly illustrated, remaining important volumes in bookshops well beyond the specific event for which they were produced. They are always designed specifically in different formats and bindings in to match the coordinated image of each exhibition.

Then there is a very extensive series of volumes of studies and research that has renewed the firmly established tradition of scholarly editions issued by the Soprintendenza archeologica di Roma. In an elegant, specially designed container appear the editions dealing with monumental complexes or classes of unpublished materials, with in-depth studies that reflect on the cultural policy of archaeology, conservation, the debate over archaeology and urban planning, the definition of new museographic proposals through the study of archival documents and the relics held in the storehouses also for the purpose of completing the exhibition itinerary of the various museum sites in the Park.

Merchandising

In addition to publications, the bookshops offer a range of reproductions of monuments and masterpieces displayed in museums, ranging from paper goods to fine objects and garments produced in collaboration with leading companies in the sector. In an age when the image now travels freely and can be reproduced on merchandise, the evocative power of beauty is used to establish the identity of a site or museum in the cultural tradition, with the hope of instilling an ever-wider public with a positive and inquiring attitude, so encouraging visits to the places of art.