Humboldt Books

Humboldt Books Humboldt Books is a publishing house specializing in narratives and travel experiences. Humboldt is an Italian publishing house based in Milan.

Humboldt draws inspiration from scientific explorations of the 18th and 19th centuries with the aim of examining travel narrative today, collecting multidisciplinary experiences, combining knowledge and practices for recounting travels and countries with a watchful and unconventional eye.

As we wait for Alpi e santuari, the next addition to the Atlas series, here is a look back at the titles that have shape...
08/06/2026

As we wait for Alpi e santuari, the next addition to the Atlas series, here is a look back at the titles that have shaped the collection.

The Atlas series brings back to light publications that have become impossible to find, documenting the journeys of explorers, the expeditions of anthropologists and ethnographical studies carried out over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, accompanied by photographs, illustrations or previously unpublished archive imagery.

Alexander von Humboldt
Viaggio alle regioni equinoziali del Nuovo Continente

Texts by Alexander von Humboldt (Italian translation by Giuseppe Lucchesini), Franco Farinelli
Illustrations by Stefano Arienti
Design CCRZ ()
Co-published with Quodlibet ()
2014

Michel Leiris
L’Africa fantasma

Texts by Michel Leiris (Italian translation by Aldo Pasquali), Barbara Fiore, Jean Jamin
Photographs by Marcel Griaule, Manuel G.L.
Design CCRZ
Co-published with Quodlibet
2020

Gustave Flaubert
Lettere dall’Egitto

Texts by Gustave Flaubert (Italian translation by Elena Baggi Regard), Emanuele Trevi (.trevi)
Illustrations by Nathalie Du Pasquier ()
Design Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio ()
2021

Alexis de Tocqueville
Viaggio in America
Stati Uniti e Canada 1831–32

Texts by Alexis de Tocqueville (Italian translation by Luciano Tamburini), Massimo Cacciari, Umberto Coldagelli
Photographs by Ramak Fazel ()
Design Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio
2023

Stendhal
Roma, Napoli e Firenze

Texts by Stendhal (Italian translation by Bruno Schacherl), Claudia De Venuto, Carlo Levi
Photographs by Delfino Sisto Legnani ()
Design Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio
2024

Photo credit

Next Tuesday, 9 June at 6:30 PM, join us in Rome at Spazio Sette Libreria () for the book launch of ROMA VIETATA, togeth...
04/06/2026

Next Tuesday, 9 June at 6:30 PM, join us in Rome at Spazio Sette Libreria () for the book launch of ROMA VIETATA, together with Stefano Ciavatta (), Luca Galofaro () and Giovanna Silva ()

Registration recommended, link in bio

Photo credit ©1972 Enrico Blasi

The book is available on our website and in bookshops

On Thursday, 11 June at 6:30 PM, join us at Monte Amiata in Milan for the launch of Gabriele Basilico fotografa Aldo Ros...
01/06/2026

On Thursday, 11 June at 6:30 PM, join us at Monte Amiata in Milan for the launch of Gabriele Basilico fotografa Aldo Rossi, followed by a guided walk through the residential complex with Giovanna Calvenzi ( .basilico), Stefano Passamonti (), Giovanna Silva (), Chiara Spangaro ( ), Pier Paolo Tamburelli.

Via Enrico Falck 53, Milan
San Leonardo (Metro Line 1)

Registration is required, places are limited. Link in bio

Photo credit

The book is available on our website and in bookshops

FOCUS: Milano On the occasion of the release of our new book Milano 1957/1973 we have prepared a special focus on the ci...
29/05/2026

FOCUS: Milano

On the occasion of the release of our new book Milano 1957/1973 we have prepared a special focus on the city through our catalogue at Sowden (.it)

Milano 1957/1973
Paolo Monti

(Humboldt Books, 2026)

Gabriele Basilico fotografa Aldo Rossibasilico
(Humboldt Books, 2026)

Milano 1963/1973
Carla Cerati
(Humboldt Books, 2023)

Green Gulfs and Panga Panga Parquet
Milano San Felice
Elisa Di Nofa (), Francesco Paleari () (eds.)
(Humboldt Books, 2023)

Sowden lamps: PL1, PL2, PL4, PL5, PL6, FL4

Prints © Giovanna Silva ()

Sowden
Corso di Porta Nuova 44, Milan
from 27 May 2026

Free Entrance

23/05/2026

Last copies back in stock on our website:
Water Ikebana
Stories About Solid & Liquid Things
by Luca Trevisani ()

Luca Trevisani guides us through the places of “Glaucocamaleo”, a feature film presented at the International Film Festival of Rome (, 2013), and the exhibition of the same name at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence (, 2014).

The artist takes us through the free flow of his thought, telling of encounters and discoveries, facts and inventions, in a continuous interplay between science and art. Through eleven short stories, water is the protagonist of this original travel diary, unfolding between mountains and plains. Rain or ice, hard hail or soft snow, it is water’s ceaseless changing of state that shows us the true nature of things and their eternal metamorphosis.

Graphic design by Teresa Piardi – Maxwell studio ()

2014
Italian
10 x 15 cm
216 pages
Paperback with French flaps, sewn binding
B/w
ISBN 9788890841866

21/05/2026

INCOMPIUTO: The Birth of a Style / La nascita di uno Stile, edited by Alterazioni Video () and Fosbury Architecture (), represents the first and only systematic investigation into a much-discussed but not yet fully recognised reality: the widespread presence throughout Italy of buildings and infrastructure whose construction has never been completed.

Photographs: Alterazioni Video, Gabriele Basilico (.basilico)
Texts: Alterazioni Video, Marc Augé, Marco Biraghi, Fosbury Architecture, Davide Giannella (), Filippo Minelli (), Wu Ming, Leoluca Orlando, Antonio Ricci, Salvatore Settis, Robert Storr, Paul Virilio
Design: Valerio Di Lucente ()

2025
Italian, English
22 × 30 cm
348 pages
Paperback, sewn binding
Colour
ISBN 9791280336361

The book is available on our website and in bookshops

Next Wednesday, 27 May at 6:30 PM, join us in Bologna at Palazzo Bentivoglio () for the book launch with Veronica Caprino ( ), Andrea Masu ( ) and Davide Trabucco ()

18/05/2026

OUT SOON!
Alpi e santuari
Samuel Butler

For many summers, Samuel Butler (1835–1902) walked through the Alpine and pre-Alpine valleys between Ticino, Piedmont, and the Lombard lakes. An attentive and warm-hearted traveller, he observed the customs and traditions of Alpine culture with a curious eye, moving among local people like an anthropologist avant la lettre.

Texts: Samuel Butler (Italian translation by Maria Luisa Castellani Agosti), Teresa Franco (.franco18), Matteo Terzaghi
Illustrations: Samuel Butler, Emi Ligabue ()
Design: Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio ()
Series: Atlas

The book will be available on our website and in bookshops starting from June 17th

13/05/2026

Reprint:
Narciso nelle colonie
Un altro viaggio in Etiopia

In early 2012, Vincenzo Latronico (.latronico) and Armin Linke () arrived in Djibouti with the idea of reaching Addis Ababa along the railway built by Italian engineers, one of whom was an intrepid forebearer of the writer. As happens in all the best travel adventures, upon discovering that they could not use the railway, the two could not but stumble upon other things…

Co-edition with Quodlibet ()
Graphic design by pupilla grafik (.pupilla)

2026
Second Edition (First Edition 2013)
Italian
16.5 x 22 cm
168 pages
Paperback
Colour, b/w
ISBN 9788822924476

11/05/2026

PRINTING:
Milano 1957/1973
Paolo Monti

As Milan emerged from the wreckage of bombings in the aftermath of the Second World War, it had two key symbolic buildings: Torre Velasca by BBPR and the Pirelli skyscraper designed by Gio Ponti. A new city sprang up around them. Paolo Monti was perhaps the greatest chronicler of that era: he explored its most obvious aspects, yet without overlooking the quality of construction details, as viewed against the backdrop of a city changing decade after decade.

Texts: Barbara Carnevali, Silvia Paoli
Photographs: Paolo Monti
Courtesy: Fondazione BEIC (), Civico Archivio Fotografico di Milano ( ) (Fondo Paolo Monti)
Design: Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio ()
Photolithography Francesco Paleari ()

The book will be available on our website and in bookshops starting from May 27th

27/04/2026

Last copies back in stock on our website:
Chapters I–### by Haris Epaminonda ()

Embarking on a new set of associations between image and subject, source and information, meaning and abstraction, this book is both a document and a memory map, tracing the beginnings of a thought, a time, an image and a place.
In tracing some of the notions and narratives embedded in Chapters, a 16mm film shot in Cyprus in 2012, Haris Epaminonda uses video and film, collage, photography, books and objects in an extensive process of assembling and disassembling appropriated materials to reconstruct non-linear narratives.

Co-published with Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft / Kunsthaus Zürich ()
Graphic design by Elektrosmog ()

2014
English
23 x 31 x 2 cm
Box set containing one paperback, sewn binding and exposed spine, and 30 folded posters
Colour, b/w
ISBN 9788890841859

Indirizzo

Milan

Sito Web

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