Hortense L. Brooks was the daughter of George Sage Brooks, the CEO of Anaconda Mining in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In April and May 1930, Hortense, her sister, mother, and father made a tour of Italy. The diary documents her daily activities on the trip, including an audience with the Pope, visits to Rome, Florence, and Venice, various historical sites, as well as people they met along the way and where they stopped to eat.

The first half of the diary is a typescript, the second half contains photographs, referred to in the text, and identified in Hortense's hand.