Vintage Photos Show How Idyllic Italy Was During The 1980s

Photographer Charles Traub has been documenting the world through his all-seeing lens for the better part of fifty years, but no place has made more of an impression on him than Italy.

Though he has visited countless times since, Traub's trips to Italy during the 1980s - the period when he first visited - remains a critical points of his career. During that time, Traub traveled to various parts of Italy each year, staying for 2 or 3 weeks at a time, to photograph what he called La Dolce Via, or the Sweet Way, a reference to the exuberant street life that has long been a hallmark of Italian culture.

The street culture and leisurely pace that Traub documented is now mostly gone, he says, as Italy struggles to keep up with the competitive global economy. Traub calls his work from this period "a time capsule" to an Italy that no longer exists.

Though Traub has shared a number of his photos with us here, the entire collection forms the basis of his new book, aptly titled, Dolce Via: Italy In the 1980's.