SHORT TAKES : Roman Books Fetch Big Money

LONDON — The world’s largest private collection of books on Rome sold for about $4 million during a three-day sale that ended today, Christie’s auctioneers said.

Top price for the sale was $240,000 paid anonymously for a 14-volume set of etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The 18th-Century artist’s etchings of architectural views on a grand scale remain influential today.

The books had belonged to Franklin H. Kissner, an American who died in 1988. Kissner was a colonel and deputy director of economics for the U.S. military government in Berlin at the end of World War II.