3144, 3294 CZECH REPUBLIC (Prague) - Prague astronomical clock - part of Historic Centre of Prague (UNESCO WHS)

3144 Prague astronomical clock (1)

Posted on 07.09.2017, 17.12.2019
The Prague astronomical clock, mounted on the southern wall of Old Town Hall in the Old Town Square, was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still operating. Its oldest part, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, was made by clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and Jan Šindel, then later a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Charles University. Later, presumably around 1490, the calendar dial was added and the clock facade was decorated with gothic sculptures.

3294 Prague astronomical clock (2)

The clock mechanism itself has three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of the Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of figures of the Apostles and other moving sculptures - notably a figure of Death (represented by a skeleton) striking the time; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months. According to local legend, the city will suffer if the clock is neglected and its good operation is placed in jeopardy.

3293 ROMANIA (Hunedoara) - Ostrov Orthodox Church

The Whitsuntide Church from Ostrov is one of the oldest preserved wall monuments from Transylvania. The Church was built in the 14th century and is considered one of the most important medieval churches from Romania and the inside painting of byzantine style reveals many biblical scenes of great historic value. Also it preserves the most representative and best preserved medieval bell tower in the Hațeg Land: with gothic windows and massive stone corners, carved manually.

3292 MYANMAR (Yangon Region) - An old "big belly” bus

The bus in the postcard is part of a fleet of WW2 Canadian built Chevrolet C-15s were brought over and used by the Americans, British and Allied forces during the Burma Campaign during World War Two. At the end of the war these military vehicles became much loved buses driving commuters around Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) and were a common sight until they were phased out in 2012. The transition was part of the government’s plan to replace as many as 22,409 old cars and buses with salone, salane and zagwe license plates, some 5000 of which were in Yangon.

3290 ISRAEL (Jerusalem) - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre - part of The Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls (UNESCO WHS)

Located in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection or Church of the Anastasis by Eastern Christians, contains, according to traditions, the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus's empty tomb, where he is said to have been buried and resurrected. The tomb is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicula. The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site.

3289 NORWAY (Oslo) - Holmenkollen

Holmenkollen is a neighborhood in the Vestre Aker borough of Oslo, the capital city of Norway. In addition to being a residential area, the area has been a ski recreation area since the late 19th century, with its famous ski jumping hill, the Holmenkollbakken, hosting  Holmenkollen Ski Festival since 1892. The hill has been rebuilt 19 times; important upgrades include a stone take-off in 1910, an in-run superstructure in 1914, and a new superstructure in 1928. Between 2008 and 2010, the entire structure was demolished and rebuilt.

2040, 2041, 2084, 2214, 2664, 2742, 2826, 3287 FRANCE (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) - Grenoble

2040 The map of Isère department and The Bastille in Grenoble

Posted on 16.11.2015, 29.11.2015, 14.01.2016, 23.07.2016, 06.09.2016, 15.10.2016, 10.12.2019
Located at the foot of the French Alps, where the river Drac joins the Isère, Grenoble is the capital city of the Isère department. The proximity of the mountains, as well as its size, has led to the city being known as the "Capital of the Alps". Its history goes back more than 2,000 years, at a time when it was a small Gallic village. While it gained in stature by becoming the capital of the Dauphiné in the 11th century, it remained for most of its history a modest parliamentary and garrison city on the borders of the Kingdom of France.

2742 Aerial view of Grenoble

The Bastille, an ancient series of fortifications at the south end of the Chartreuse mountain range, overlooking the city of Grenoble, was begun in the Middle Ages, but later years saw extensive additions, including a semi-underground defense network, credited as the most extensive example of early 18th-century fortifications in France, and then held an important strategic point on the Alpine frontier with the Kingdom of Savoy. A small garrison was maintained in the fort until 1940.

2826 The Palace of the Parliament of Dauphiné

 

The Palace of the Parliament of Dauphiné was constructed in Place Saint André around 1500 and extended in 1539. It was the location of the Parlement of Dauphiné until the French Revolution. It then became a courthouse until 2002. The left wing of the palace was extended in 1897. The front of the former seat of the nearby Dauphiné Parlement combines elements from a gothic chapel and a Renaissance façade. The building now belongs to the Isère Council (Conseil Général de l'Isère).

2041 Grenoble - The Isère's quai, the Bubbles,
the Marius Gontard Bridge, and Vercors Massif.

The Marius Gontard Bridge is historically the second Isère crossing site in Grenoble. The first stone bridge was built between 1621 and 1671. After much destruction and reconstruction, it was rebuilt in stone in 1839 and called the bridge of the Hospital. It carries since 1924 the same name as the street that continues, that of a General Counsel of Grenoble (1856-1923). With a total length of 73m, it has three spans, the central span, the longest, with a range of 27m.

2084 Grenoble - The Isère's quai on wintertime, and the Bubbles.

The first cable transport system was installed on the Bastille in 1875. Since 1934, the Bastille has been the destination of the Grenoble-Bastille Cable Car, known to locals as Les Bulles (the bubbles). It is one of the oldest urban cable cars in the world and runs all year round. The route takes the cars across the Isère and over the roofs of the old Saint Laurent quarter before passing over a bastion of the curtain wall of the fort and then over the Rabot and various successive fortifications before arriving at the upper station.

2214 Grésivaudan Valley - Funiculaire de Saint-Hilaire du Touvet,
villages with Belledone in background, Dent de Crolles, and the Bubbles.

Except for a few dozen houses on the slopes of the Bastille hill, Grenoble is exclusively built on the alluvial plain of the Isère and Drac rivers at an altitude of 214 metres. As a result, the city itself is extremely flat. Mountain sports are an important tourist attraction in summer and winter. Twenty large and small ski resorts surround the city, the nearest being Le Sappey-en-Chartreuse, which is about 15 minutes' drive away. Historically, both Grenoble and the surrounding areas were sites of heavy industry and mining.

2664 Grenoble

 

In 1987, Grenoble became the second French city to reintroduce trams, the first being the Nantes tramway. The current network is 35-kilometre long, and comprises five lines: lines A, B, C, D and E. Trams were first introduced to Grenoble in 1894, and this first generation tram system survived until 1952. The city is served by a total of 103 trams: the older 53, numbered from 2001 to 2053, are Alsthom TFS, whilst the newer 50, numbered from 6001 to 6050, are Alstom Citadis trams.

3287 Grenoble

 

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.

3285 INDIA (Rajasthan) - Jaswant Thada and Mehran Fort

In the foreground of the postcard is Jaswant Thada, a cenotaph located in Jodhpur, commonly known as the Taj Mahal of Mewar. Built by Maharaja Sardar Singh of Jodhpur State in 1899 in memory of his father, Maharaja Jaswant Singh II serves as the cremation ground for the royal family of Marwar. The mausoleum is built out of intricately carved sheets of marble. These sheets are extremely thin and polished so that they emit a warm glow when illuminated by the Sun.The cenotaph's grounds feature carved gazebos, a tiered garden, and a small lake.

3284 ROMANIA (Iaşi) - Postcrossing Meetup, Iaşi, 24 March 2018

3284 The fourth postcard of the series
"100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (4/12)
- The Palace of Culture in Iaşi

The previous postcard of the series "100 years since the Great Union of Romania" (3/12)

The fourth meeting of the Romanian postcrossers in the year of the Centenary of the Great Union took place on March 24, 2018, in Iaşi. However, the postcard was sent by Mihnea Răducu not from Iaşi, but from Chişinău, from the Republic of Moldova, which is proven not only by the stamp and the postmark, but also by the signatures of several Moldovan postcrossers, to whom I thanks from the bottom of my heart. The postcard depict The Palace of Culture in Iaşi, about which I wrote here.

3283 KIRIBATI - House of Assembly in Ambo

The capital and hub of the Republic of Kiribati is South Tarawa, home to approximately half of Kiribati's population. The South Tarawa population centre consists of all the small islets from Betio in the west to Bonriki and Tanaea in the east, connected by the South Tarawa main road, with a population of 50,182 as of 2010. It is home to most of the government, commercial and education facilities including the House of Assembly (Maneaba ni Maungatabu) in Ambo. From 1979 to most of 2000 the seat of government was situated in Bairiki. The administrative headquarters were relocated to their current location soon after construction on the new building was finished in October 2000. This new House of Assembly was built by a Japanese company.

2928, 3281 BELGIUM (Brussels) - Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta (UNESCO WHS)

2928 Stairway of Hôtel Tassel

Victor Horta was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1861 and lived for several years in Paris before returning to Belgium to work as an architect in 1880. He achieved rapid success, working on several prestigious buildings and receiving a number of official posts including a position at the Free University of Brussels. From 1892, Horta began working in the new Art Nouveau style, being credited as the first to introduce the style to architecture from the decorative arts. Four of his buildings - Hôtel Tassel, Hôtel Solvay, Hôtel van Eetvelde, and Maison & Atelier Horta - were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

3281 Maison & Atelier Horta
Closeup of the skylight

The stylistic revolution represented by these works is characterised by their open plan, diffusion and transformation of light throughout the construction, the creation of a decor that brilliantly illustrates the curved lines of decoration embracing the structure of the building, the use of new materials (steel and glass) and the introduction of modern technical utilities. Through the rational use of the metallic structures, often visible or subtly dissimulated, Victor Horta conceived flexible, light and airy living areas, directly adapted to the personality of their inhabitants.

3260, 3280 IRELAND / UNITED KINGDOM (Northern Ireland) - The map of the island

3260

Posted on 04.02.2018, 03.12.2019
Located in the North Atlantic, Ireland is the third-largest island in Europe (after Great Britain and Iceland), separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Politically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (with Dublin as capital city), which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland (with Belfast as capital city), which is part of the United Kingdom. In 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.6 million (under 4.8 million in the Republic of Ireland and over 1.8 million in Northern Ireland).

3280

The island's geography comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland. The island has lush vegetation, a product of its mild but changeable climate which is free of extremes in temperature. As of 2013, the amount of land that is wooded in Ireland is about 11% of the total, compared with a European average of 35%. The Irish climate is very moderate and classified as oceanic. As a result, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant.

3279 MAURITIUS - Chamarel

Chamarel is a village located in the western hills on the west coast of Mauritius at an elevation of about 260 m, 6 kilometres from the coast, where the cascades are formed on the River du Capano flowing through an "amphitheater of abrupt rocks". It is named after the Frenchman Charles Antoine de Chazal de Chamarel, who lived in the area around 1800. One of the notable places of interest is the Coloured Earths, which is about 4 kilometres to the south west of the willage. It is a phenomenon resulting from colour variations due to cooling of molten rock.

2428, 3278 MOLDOVA - Rudi Geodetic Point - part of Struve Geodetic Arc (UNESCO WHS)

2428 Rudi Geodetic Point

Posted on 02.04.2016, 01.12.2019
The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea (designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005), about which I wrote here. In Oblast of Moldavia and Bessarabia, back then in Russian Empire, were 27 observation points, but UNESCO included only one in World Heritage Site, located near Rudi village, in Soroca district. This point was set up in 1847, and the obelisk was opened on June 17, 2006.

3278 Rudi Geodetic Point