The picture postcard was created on Boulevard Longchamp in Marseille

In the history of inventions there is often a desire to get around a problem. That’s it Dominique Piazza was finance. An accountant in a house that imported dried fruits and vegetables in the second part of the 19th century, the Marseillais had been responsive to the request of Antonin Billaud, his friend who was in exile in Argentinianto find a job and who, suffering from homesickness, made him send him pictures reminding him of his hometown.

Sharing the same love for the banks of the Lacydon, Dominique Piazza did so immediately. From the Boulevard Longchamp where he lived, he had large format pictures of iconic sites of Marseille sent to the American continent. One day there was the reform, another day the Old Port…with the help of a phototype artist, he placed a series of cardboard pictures about fifty centimeters on each side. Seven francs, eight francs, nine francs… His sense of friendship had cost him dearly. To reduce the cost, Dominique Piazza then had an idea that appeared on the night of August 4, 1891: that of collecting several pictures on the same support, which would reduce it to the form of a postcard.