France in B/W

Those beautiful cards come from Clotilde from France.

 

Paris – Enfant portant un pain, 1920-1930

Merry Christmas from France

 

This beautiful Christmas card came as a surprise from Melanie. I love that one! 🙂

La Tour Eiffel, vol. 2

 

Another great card from Maria from Sofia. Again, with awesome stamp! 😀

More than 200,000,000 people have visited the tower since its construction in 1889, including 6,719,200 in 2006. The tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world.

As one of the most iconic images in the world, the Eiffel Tower has been the inspiration for the creation of over 30 duplicates and similar towers around the world.

Paris Métro

 

Another great card for my subway map card collection. This one came from Maria in Sofia. And the stamps, oh, the stamps… 😀 Lovely stamps with the Sofia subway. So thoughtful! 😀

The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is a rapid transit system that operates in Paris and Paris Metropolitan Area. The network is mostly underground and runs to 214 kilometres in length. It has 303 stations. There are 16 lines, numbered 1 to 14 with two minor lines, 3bis and 7bis. Paris’s is the second busiest metro system in Europe, after Moscow. The first line opened without ceremony on 19 July 1900, during the World’s Fair (Exposition Universelle). The system expanded quickly until the First World War and the core was complete by the 1920s. Extensions into suburbs (together with Line 11) were built in the 1930s. The network reached saturation after World War II.

La Tour Eiffel

 

My very first Eiffel tower postcard is pink, how awesome is that! 😀 This card came as a surprise from Melanie from France.

The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world.

Tonnerre

 

This beauty came from Tamayre from France. 🙂

Tonnerre is a commune in the Yonne department in Burgundy in north-central France. And that’s about all the information I found in English. But it looks like a place to see. 🙂

Lille – Vieille Bourse

 

I received this postcard from Lille from the Dudu familiy via Postcrossing. 🙂

It pictures Vieille Bourse, the old stock exchange. It was built by Julien Destrée in 1653 whose commission was to build an exchange to ‘rival that of any great city’. It was also a commission motivated greatly by the persistent ill-health of the Lillois bankers and merchants. Trading had always taken place in the unprotected open air at the Fontaine-au-Change on the Place du Vieux-Marché in all types of weather. As a result the bankers endured regular bouts of flu and colds. By 1651 they had had enough and took their wheezy deputation to the Magistrate. The Magistrate, in sympathy with their cause, put in an application to Philip IV, King of Spain and the Count of Flanders, for a more suitable stock exchange. The result is a quandrangle of 24 privately purchased, ornately decorated yet identical houses surrounding an interior rectangular courtyard where trading could take place. Access into the courtyard is through any one of the four arches located at each of the four sides.

Sacré-Cœur Basilica

This card came from my pen pal Roger, and on  the back it simply says “Happy 1st of May” (I’m just trying to point out how terribly behind I am on my posts here 😀 ).

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart, commonly known as Sacré-Cœur Basilica, consecrated in 1919, is one of the most iconic monuments in Paris. At the top of the Butte Montmarte, it provides one of the most beautiful panoramic views of the capital, from more than 400 metres above ground. In a Roman-Byzantine style, the Sacré Coeur is recognizable by its white colour. Inside the building, the ceiling is decorated with the largest mosaic in France measuring about 480 m². The crypt is worth a visit. A bit higher up, visitors can access the dome where the 360° view of Paris is magnificent. A short walk from the Sacré Coeur is the Place du Tertre, the district of Abbesses with its steep, winding roads, and at the bottom of the hill, the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret.

Moulin Rouge

 

When I hear about Moulin Rouge, the first thing in my mind is the movie. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” I love that movie!

As for the original Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris… The house was co-founded in 1889 by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who also owned the Paris Olympia. Close to Montmartre in the Paris district of Pigalle (known as the Parisian red lights district) on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th arrondissement, it is marked by the red windmill on its roof.

Moulin Rouge is best known as the spiritual birthplace of the modern form of the can-can dance. Originally introduced as a seductive dance by the courtesans who operated from the site, the can-can dance revue evolved into a form of entertainment of its own and led to the introduction of cabarets across Europe. Today, Moulin Rouge is a tourist attraction, offering musical dance entertainment for visitors from around the world.

Definitely a place I’d like to visit some day! The card came from Candy from Hong Kong. 🙂

Notre Dame de Paris

 

This is the heart of Paris – so much so that distances from Paris to every part of metropolitan France are measured from place du Parvis Notre Dame, the square in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris. A bronze star across the street from the cathedral’s main entrance marks the exact location of point zéro des routes de France.

Notre Dame, the most visited unticketed site in Paris, with upwards of 14 million people crossing its threshold a year, is not just a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture; it was also the focus of Catholic Paris for seven centuries.

Built on a site occupied by earlier churches and, a millennium before that, a Gallo-Roman temple, it was begun in 1163 according to the design of Bishop Maurice de Sully and largely completed by the early 14th century. The cathedral was badly damaged during the Revolution; architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc carried out extensive renovations between 1845 and 1864. The cathedral is on a very grand scale; the interior alone is 130m long, 48m wide and 35m high and can accommodate more than 6000 worshippers.

This card came from my friend Maya and on the back it simply says “I will take you there”. Well, I’m still waiting! 😀 It’s like a dream of mine to get to the top of the cathedral and take a picture with the Gargoyles. 😀