Humboldt Books

Casa
Italia
Milan
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.

04/12/2025

See you in Rome!

From today through Sunday, you’ll find us in Rome at La Nuvola convention center (Viale Asia 40/44) for Più Libri Più Liberi book fair ().

Come and find us, we’ll be at Stand F47!

01/12/2025

Our new website is now live!

We’re excited to announce a completely redesigned platform where you can delve into our entire catalogue – featuring more than 140 titles!

Visit humboldtbooks.com to explore it.

Design by MAY (), coding by Stefano Andreotti (), project coordination and strategy by zoll (.studio).

Photo credit: Francesco Spallacci ()

27/11/2025

See you in Rome!

From Wednesday December 4 through Sunday December 8, you’ll find us in Rome at La Nuvola convention center (Viale Asia 40/44) for Più Libri Più Liberi book fair ().

Come and find us, we’ll be at Stand F47!

24/11/2025

This Wednesday we’ll launch Mosca 1962 in Florence!
Join us at Zoo_Hub () at 6:30 PM for a conversation with Puccio Duni, Martino Marangoni () and Nicoletta Morozzi ().

The event is part of the TMMT series by Manifattura Tabacchi () in collaboration with Todo Modo ().

Free entrance

21/11/2025

“A curious form of mental blindness leads us to ignore them, as if they were unworthy of our attention. As negative monuments to architectural intention, like history’s positive monuments they enjoy the heritage status of ruins that testify to the victories and defeats of wars fought in some distant past. Regardless of the fate they have suffered, the success of these structures as architectural statements is never called into question. They do have a ‘style’ of sorts, albeit a merely technical one, a function of their ongoing incompletion.”

Excerpt from “Abitare l’inabitabile” / “Bringing the Uninhabitable to Life”, text by the philosopher Paul Virilio from the new edition of the book “Incompiuto: la nascita di uno Stile” / “Incompiuto: The Birth of a Style”, edited by Alterazioni Video () and Fosbury Architecture ()

The book is available on our website and in bookshops.

11/11/2025

See you in Paris during the Paris Photo Fair ()!

From Thursday to Sunday, you’ll find us at Césure (.paris) at 13 Rue Santeuil, for the Offprint Art Book Fair ().

Come and say hi!

10/11/2025

This Friday we’ll launch Mosca 1962 on the occasion of BookCity Milano.
Join us at Castello Sforzesco di Milano, Sala Bertarelli, at 6 PM for the talk “La giovane Russia. Mosca 1962 nelle foto di Andrea Branzi”, with Enrico Morteo and Valentina Parisi.

Mosca 1962 is part of our Time Travel series, which revisits journeys, archives, and gazes of the twentieth century, weaving together photography, architecture, and writing to explore travel as an experience of discovery, memory, and imagination.

Free entrance

Photo credit: Francesco Spallacci

06/11/2025

As part of the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of our Time Travel series, until Sunday November 9, from 2 to 7 PM, we’ll be at settantaventidue-extension with a pop-up store featuring our full catalogue on sale.

Come and say hi!

Tuesday 4 – Sunday 9 November
2–7 PM
Milano Via Lodovico Il Moro, 1

Exhibition design and photo credit: zoll

05/11/2025

Out now!
INCOMPIUTO: The Birth of a Style / La nascita di uno Stile (New Edition)
Alterazioni Video

Almost ten years after its first publication, Incompiuto – defined by the authors as “the most important Italian architectural style from the post-war period to the present day” – has taken on growing cultural significance in the debate on the country’s architectural landscape. The
result of over fifteen years of field research, the volume 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. This new edition updates and expands the project with additional visual material, an essay on the current state of the phenomenon and an updated census of unfinished works.

INCOMPIUTO continues to be an invitation to observe our surroundings, recognising a potential grammar of the present in the absence of completion.

Edited by Alterazioni Video and Fosbury Architecture

Photographs: Alterazioni Video, Gabriele 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

Photo credit: Francesco Spallacci

28/10/2025

See you in Turin during Artissima Fair!

From Friday to Sunday, you’ll find us at the very first edition of phonetics, the new art publishing festival at Via Buscalioni 4, Turin.

Come and say hi!

25/10/2025

On Saturday 1 November we’ll kick off the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of our Time Travel series. Join us at Triennale Milano at 2 PM for the talk “25 Time Travel: 10 Years of Journeys Through the Archives”, on the occasion of Milano Arch Week.

Our editorial director, Giovanna Silva, will be in conversation with Giovanna Calvenzi, who has been overseeing the Gabriele Basilico Archive since 2013 – Basilico being the author of the very first volume in the series.

The Time Travel series revisits journeys, archives, and gazes of the twentieth century, weaving together photography, architecture, and writing to explore travel as an experience of discovery, memory, and imagination.

Please register via the link in bio to secure your spot!

Photo credit: Francesco Spallacci

22/10/2025

Out now!
Mosca 1962
Andrea Branzi

In the summer of 1962, while still a university student of architecture, Andrea Branzi went to visit his brother Piergiorgio in Moscow, where he was working as a Rai correspondent. This was the world of the Cold War, but the ‘thaw’ heralded by Nikita Khrushchev had somewhat loosened the grip of the Soviet regime. With a curiosity for everything, the young Branzi was struck by the immense size of the capital, by its new neighbourhoods, by the signs of communism and its history, by the omnipresence of the military, but also by the relaxed outlook of the youth, the department stores, the Russians’ carefree relationship with nature, the innocence of the children and the widespread love of chess. What emerges is the portrait of a population markedly different from our own, yet one with which a shared future might be imagined. In the images from this youthful journey, we may perhaps glimpse a number of elements that would later emerge of Branzi the ‘utopian’ designer and thinker.

Photographs: Andrea Branzi ()
Texts: Gian Piero Piretto (), Angela Rui ()
Design: Teresa Piardi – Maxwell Studio ()

Photo credit

Indirizzo

Milan

Sito Web

http://www.humboldtbooks.com/

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