The Vanished Metropolis:
Glimpses of Prewar Berlin
through the Lens  of Travel Ephemera.

Collaborative production of the Virtual Grand Tour Museum® and the tiptop street®
First edition 2024. In two volumes
Box set 
Page Count
— 736 (1st volume, ISBN 979-8-9851762-4-7)
— 272 (2nd volume, ISBN 979-8-9851762-5-4)
Dimensions 8⅔ × 11¼
 
The Vanished Metropolis presents a unique immersive experience of late-19th- and early-20th-c. Berlin. The reader is offered a glimpse into its bustling hotels and restaurants, museums and theaters, cabarets and department stores, public transportation, cinemas, and houses of worship through the prism of contemporary ephemera: theater and cabaret tickets, bus stubs, restaurant and hotel bills, menus, programs, posters, brochures, and advertising postcards. The rich visual narrative is complemented with an exhaustive scholarly text that sheds light on the history of the sites, the lives of prominent protagonists, the architecture and décor. With approximately 2,500 full-scale facsimile illustrations, based on a unique private collection of tourist ephemera, the book brings back to life three epochs of the great European capital: Imperial, Weimar, and Nazi and transforms the reader into a virtual time traveler.