3446 RUSSIA (Saint Petersburg) - Postcrossing Meetup, Saint Petersburg, 19 February 2020

This postcard was made on the occasion of the postcrossing meeting that took place on February 19, 2020 in Saint Petersburg. The organizers chose as image the Water Supply Tower, one of the oldest constructions on the SPbPU (Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University), built in 1905, three years after the opening of Polytechnic Institute. Its bizarre architectural look with fragmented forms and lines clearly contrasts with the other buildings on the campus; it is a kind of a hi-rise dominant of the entire complex of the two- and four-storey buildings.

3444 UNITED STATES (California) - Big Sur Coast Highway

Big Sur Coast Highway is a section of California State Route 1 that is widely considered to be one of the most scenic driving routes in the United States, if not the world. It was the first California Scenic Highway and the first federal All American Road. It is generally considered to include the 114 km segment adjoining the region of Big Sur between Malpaso Creek near Carmel Highlands in the north and San Carpóforo Creek near San Simeon in the south.

3429 ROMANIA - The Dacians

The Dacians were a Thracian people who were the ancient inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. In the absence of historical records written by the Dacians (and Thracians) themselves, analysis of their origins depends largely on the remains of material culture. From roughly 500 BC, the Dacians developed a distinct civilization, which was capable of supporting large centralised kingdoms by 1st BC and 1st AD.

3392 NETHERLANDS (Netherlands / North Holland) - The Bulldog Coffeeshop in Amsterdam

The story of The Bulldog starts in 1975, when Henk de Vries, who had started selling marijuana in 1970 at the Kralingen Music Festival, converted his father's sex shop in Amsterdam's red-light district into a coffeeshop, the first in the way we know nowadays. Henk asked ex-pat Australian artist Harold Thornton to paint some signage on the front of the 1st Bulldog Coffeeshop Nr. 90 but Harold turned this exercise into a mural that goes across the front of the whole shop. The mural helped the coffeeshop become a magnet for backpackers and tourists and its reputation grew. The company logo was inspired by Henk's dog at that time, a bulldog named Joris.

3379 UNITED STATES (Hawaii) - Queen Liliuokalani

 

 

If Kamehameha The Great (c. 1758? - 1819) was the first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Liliuokalani was the last one, ruling from January 29, 1891, until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. Born Lydia Liliu Loloku Walania Kamakaeha on September 2, 1838, in Honolulu, in a high-ranking family, she received a thoroughly modern education, which was augmented by a tour of the Western world.

0555-0557, 3319, 3327 BULGARIA (Burgas) - Ancient City of Nessebar (UNESCO WHS)

3319 The Ancient City of Nessebar

Posted on 15.03.2013, 31.12.2019, 03.01.2020

For miles, the road from Varna to Nessebar creeps like a snake along the coast, through the forests where coniferous and deciduous mix like the ethnic groups in the Balkans. But that's not what saw with three millennia ago the Thracians, who came from inland to built the settlement named Menebria, neither the Greeks, who came from the sea to lay the foundations of the prosperous colony named Mesembria. In 71 BC the town fell under Roman rule, yet continued to enjoy privileges, and from the 5th century AD onwards had become one of the most important strongholds of the Byzantine Empire.

0555 A bird's-eye view of the Ancient City of Nessebar

In the following centuries it passed several times from the hands of the Byzantines in those of the Bulgarians, and even of the Crusaders in 1366. The Bulgarian version of the name, Nesebar or Mesebar, has been attested since the 11th century. Conquered by the Ottomans in the same year as Constantinople (1453), it gradually declined until returned to Bulgaria in 1885, becoming since the beginning of the 20th century a key Bulgarian seaside resort.

3327 Vernacular wooden houses in Nessebar

 

As an "outstanding testimony of multilayered cultural and historical heritage", a place where many civilizations left their tangible traces, from the Dorians Black Sea colony's structures to the churches from the Middle Ages and the vernacular wooden houses built in the 19th century, Nessebar was included on the list of UNESCO WHS under the name Ancient City of Nessebar. It is sometimes said to be the town with the highest number of churches per capita, because a total of forty churches had survive, wholly or partly, in the vicinity of the town. Its ancient part is situated on a little peninsula, previously an island, linked with the mainland with only a relatively narrow passageway.

0556 The Church of Christ Pantocrator in Nessebar

One of them is the Church of Christ Pantocrator, constructed in the 13th-14th century and best known for its exterior decoration, rich and colourful. Designed in late Byzantine cross-in-square style, was builded from stones and brickwork, a construction technique known as opus mixtum. The best-known feature of the Church of Christ Pantocrator is the rich and colourful decoration of its exterior walls. Used today as art gallery, is among Bulgaria's best preserved churches of the Middle Ages.

0557 The windmill on the passageway from New Nessebar to Old Nessebar

The Old Windmill shown in the third postcard, located on the passageway from New Nessebar to Old Nessebar, is a lovely, very intact Black Sea style wildmill. Aren't known too much about it, but it's supposed that was built in the Bulgarian revival period from the 17th to the 19th century. The building have a rough style, the design being entirely functional. The windmill base reveals a wooden guiderail and direct wood-to-wood contact.

3295 ROMANIA - Postcrossing Meetup, Bucharest, 5 May 2018

3295 The fifth postcard of the series
"100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (5/12)
- "The passage of the Romanian army to Dobruja"
by Henryk Dembitzky.

The previous postcard of the series "100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (4/12)

The fifth meeting of the Romanian postcrossers in the year of the Centenary of the Great Union took place on May 5, 2018, in Bucharest. This time Mihnea Răducu chose for the postcard dedicated to the meeting the lithography The passage of the Romanian army to Dobrudja by Henryk Dembitzky (1830-1906), a Polish artist, graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, refugee in Romania. He made his debut as a lithographer in Bucharest, in 1877, therefore in the very year in which Romania proclaimed its independence, and his lithographs in colors related to the War of Independence are very well known by the Romanians.

3286 INDONESIA - Gibran Rakabuming Raka and Selvi Ananda at their wedding

Mayor of Surakarta from 2005 to 2012, and the Governor of Jakarta from 2012 to 2014, Joko Widodo (born Mulyono, 21 June 1961) became in July 2014 the first president of Indonesia not to come from an elite political or military background. He has 3 children, the eldest being Gibran Rakabuming Raka (born in Surakarta at 1 October 1987), a successful businessman and politician. Gibran married Selvi Ananda on 11 June 2015, and the couple had their first child, Jan Ethes Srinarendra, on 10 March 2016.

3238 LATVIA (Riga) - Riga

With 639,630 inhabitants (2016), Riga is the largest city in the Baltic states, home to one third of Latvia's population and one tenth of the Baltic states' population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga, at the mouth of the Daugava. About the Historic Centre of Riga, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I writed something here. On the postcard are depicted the silhouettes of the main sights of the city, among which are (from left to the right): Freedom Monument, House of the Blackheads, St. Peter's Church, Riga Castle, Riga Dom, Latvian National Opera, the Railway Bridge and Riga Radio and TV Tower.

0671, 3235 RUSSIA (Moscow) - The towers of Moscow Kremlin - part of Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

0671 Spasskaya Tower

Posted on 07.06.2013, 06.01.2018
The Spasskaya Tower is the main tower with a through-passage on the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, which overlooks the Red Square. It was built in 1491 under the supervision of the architect Pietro Antonio Solari (Pyotr Fryazin), and was initial named Frolovskaya, later being renamed the Spasskaya (Savior's), in honor of the Icon of the Savoir Not Made by Hands, which crowned the gateway. Originally it had half of its present height (71m with the star mounted in 1935), in 1624-1625 being built a multi-tiered top with a stone tent roof.

3235 Towers Konstantino-Eleninskaya,
Nabatnaya and Spasskaya

 

It was the first one to be crowned with the hipped roof in 1624-1625 by architects Bazhen Ogurtsov and Christopher Galloway (a Scottish architect and clockmaker). The first clock was mounted in 1491, and the present Kremlin chimes were installed in 1851-1852 by the Butenop brothers. The tower gate was once the main entrance into the Kremlin. In tsarist times, anyone passing through the gates had to remove their headgear and dismount their horses. This tradition was broken in the Soviet era. In 1935, the Soviet government installed a red star instead of a two-headed eagle on top of the tower.

3229 ROMANIA - George I Rákóczi (1593-1648)

George I Rákóczi (8 June 1593, Szerencs - 11 October 1648) was Prince of Transylvania from 1630 until his death in 1648. He was the eldest son of Baron Sigismund Rákóczi and his second wife, Anna Gerendi. Sigismund, who was a successful military commander in Royal Hungary, was the first member of the Rákóczi family to rise to prominence. During the reign of George I Rákóczi, as during the reign of the princes Gabriel Bethlen or George II Rákóczi, the Principality of Transylvania, under Ottoman suzerainty, experienced an epoch of economic blossoming and political and cultural affirmation, reinforcing the central power.

3210 VIETNAM (Red River Delta) - Vietnam Fine Arts Museum

3210 Vietnam Fine Arts Museum -
Two Girls and a Child, by Tô Ngọc Vân

Just across the street from the Temple of Literature, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum can be easily spottedfrom afar. Like many other buildings that house museums in Hanoi, it was built in the 1930s as a Girl School for Indochina high-ranked officers. In 1966, it officially became Vietnam Fine Arts Museum where store many of Vietnamese artistic essences. It displays not only paintings, ceramics and lacquers created by modern Post-war artists but many of its contents date back as far as pre-historic and feudalism time.

3192 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Mary Rose

Launched in 1511, during the reign of King Henry VIII, the Mary Rose was named after the King's younger sister, Mary Tudor (1496-1533), who was later briefly Queen of France. The rose was the emblem of the Tudors. She was a carrack-type warship, with high "castles" in the bow and stern with a low waist of open decking in the middle. The shape of the hull has a so-called tumblehome form and reflected the use of the ship as a platform for heavy guns.

3130 ROMANIA (Timiş) - Fabric Synagogue in Timişoara

The Fabric New Synagogue in Timişoara is a Neologue synagogue inaugurated in 1899, when Timişoara (Temesvar) was a part of Transylvania and integrated in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The building was designed in Neo-Moorish style by the well-known Hungarian architect Lipot Baumhorn (or Leopold Baumhorn), based in Budapest, and the construction itself was under the direction of local contractor Josef Kremmer. Its construction was made possible by the contributions of donors.

3116 POLAND (Mazovia) - Warsaw between 1767 and 1779 in the paintings of Canaletto

In 1569 was established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (a bi-confederation of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch, who was both the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania), which became one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th- and 17th-century Europe. Due to its central location between the Commonwealth's capitals of Kraków and Vilnius, Warsaw became practically the capital of the Commonwealth in 1596, when King Sigismund III Vasa moved his court from Kraków to Warsaw (also the permanent seat of the General Sejm from the same year), although the modern concept of a single capital city was to some extent inapplicable in the feudal and decentralized Commonwealth.

3088 ROMANIA - Michael the Brave (1558-1601)

Michael the Brave (1558, Târgul de Floci - August 9, 1601, Câmpia Turzii) was the Prince of Wallachia (1593-1601), Prince of Moldavia (1600) and ruler of Transylvania (1599-1600). He is one of Romania's greatest national heroes, being considered the first author of Romanian unity. Michael was born under the family name of Pătraşcu. He is argued by most historians to have been the illegitimate son of Pătraşcu the Good of the Drăculeşti branch of the House of Basarab. His mother was Theodora Kantakouzene, a member of the Kantakouzenoi, a noble family allegedly descended from the Byzantine Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos.

3076 ROMANIA - Stephen the Great (1438/1439-1504)

 

 

Stephen III (1438-1439, Borzeşti - July 2, 1504, Suceava), known as Stephen the Great, was the voivode (or prince) of Moldavia between 1457 and 1504, for 47 years, the longest reign of the Medieval period in the Romanian Lands. During his reign, Moldavia reached the peak of its state development, knowing a long period of internal stability, economic prosperity and social peace. He wore over 40 battles (of which only in two was defeated), and it is said that after each victory he raised a church.

1639, 2911 ESTONIA (Pärnu) - Kihnu cultural space (UNESCO ICH)

1639

Posted on 08.06.2015, 20.12.2016
Lying off Estonia's Baltic coast, the small islands of Kihnu and Manija are home to a community of 600 people whose cultural expressions and agricultural traditions have been kept alive over the centuries largely through the island's female population. Their geographic isolation, their strong sense of community spirit and their steadfast attachment to the customs of their ancestors have enabled the Kihnu people to preserve their crafts and customs. Today, Kihnu culture is threatened by economic hardship, uncontrolled housing development and the intrusion of tourists insensitive to the islands' traditions and natural environment.

2911

Singing is an integral part of collective handicraft activities and of religious celebrations. Particularly noteworthy among the musical repertory of the islanders is an oral tradition of pre-Christian origin, known as runic or Kalevala-metre songs. But the most visible emblem of Kihnu culture remains the woolen handicrafts worn by the women. Working using traditional looms and local wool, the women weave and knit mittens, stockings, skirts and blouses, which often feature bright colours, vivid stripes and intricate embroidery. Many of the symbolic forms and colours adorning these garments are rooted in ancient legends.

2910 UNITED STATES - Grandfather Earth

"Native Americans have always believed that the earth beneath their feet was sacred. Every river, canyon and forest was evidence to them that He, Creator was near. The ideas that they were stewards of creation was etched in their bones. To take and never give back to the earth as to show distain for the Great Spirit. The lives lived by the first nations people was done so by a code of honor. This was portrayed by the way a tribe would revere their elders and chieftains. The consummation of the experiences, wisdom and insight of the old ones was a deep well in which to draw from.