F*r*o*m*m*e*r*?s has a great new book called ?Rome Past and Present.? It has photos of Roman ruins but comes with a transparent page overlay that you place over the photo to see what the ruin looked liked 2000 years ago. You can stand in front of the Coliseum and see what the Romans saw. Great idea.

This it is not a new idea. Bookstores in Italy have been selling these overlay books for years. These books are sold at the historical sites, and also at Rome museum bookstores. I bought two such books a few years ago: one for Pompeii, and one for Rome. The overlays are extremely helpful for making sense of the ruins.

Baleon, did you write the darn thing? Three posts seems a little too enthusiastic!

I posted 3 times because the first two seemed to disappear. I thought I'd see whether Fodor's was deleting posts about other publishers.

Click on your username (near the upper left corner of the screen) to pull up every thread you've ever posted to. All three of yours on this topic are there.

This board is very busy, and new posts "push down" those that don't have replies very quickly, so that you'd have to scroll down ("Next 50&quot past the first page to find them otherwise.

I've seen books similar to this in Rome, and elsewhere. It's a great idea but I think it could be expanded beyond books. This plastic overlay concept would be great as you get older and your body turns to ruins. Rather than expensive plastic surgery, you could simply drape on a plastic overlay and -- voila! -- people could see what you looked like 40 years ago!

:^O

Great idea, Capo!!