Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta, Brussels, Belgium

This postcard was sent by Martinha for the "Missing Unesco" tag. It shows the house and studio of the architect Victor Horta, in Brussels. She bought it on a trip there when she visited the museum and she says the visit is well worth it. I've been thinking about visiting Brussels for a weekend in winter... I'll definitely check it out if I'm there.

The four major town houses - Hôtel Tassel, Hôtel Solvay, Hôtel van Eetvelde, and Maison & Atelier Horta - located in Brussels and designed by the architect Victor Horta, one of the earliest initiators of Art Nouveau, are some of the most remarkable pioneering works of architecture of the end of the 19th century. The stylistic revolution represented by these works is characterised by their open plan, the diffusion of light, and the brilliant joining of the curved lines of decoration with the structure of the building.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1005

Historic Area of Willemstad, Inner City and Harbour, Curaçao

The last couple of weeks have been really great for my Unesco collection, I managed to arrange some pretty awesome trades of rare places, and this is one of them. It also completes the Netherlands for now :) It was sent by Gosia.

The people of the Netherlands established a trading settlement at a fine natural harbour on the Caribbean island of Curaçao in 1634. The town developed continuously over the following centuries. The modern town consists of several distinct historic districts whose architecture reflects not only European urban-planning concepts but also styles from the Netherlands and from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial towns with which Willemstad engaged in trade.
Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/819

I love this postcard, it's so colourful and "Caribbean", specially the letters with flowers. It's funny because, when I opened the Unesco page for this site, there was a photo from above overlooking the roofs of the houses and it did seem like Lisbon, with the orange roofs and square streets!

Almadén and the new Unesco sites

The good (or bad?) thing about collecting Unesco postcards is that it's a never-ending collection. Not only are there sites almost impossible to get, but every year new sites are added to the list.

This year, the Unesco comittee added 26 new sites (article). I have a couple of them but this week I arranged a trade with Fabienne famalubel and I got a card from Almadén, inscribed as Heritage of Mercury (shared with Idrija in Slovenia).

This is the card I got from Almadén mines.

The property includes the mining sites of Almadén, where mercury (quicksilver) has been extracted since Antiquity, and Idrija, where mercury was first found in 1490 A.D. The Spanish property includes buildings relating to its mining history, including Retamar Castle, religious buildings and traditional dwellings. The site in Idrija notably features mercury stores and infrastructure, as well as miners’ living quarters, and a miners’ theatre. The sites bear testimony to the intercontinental trade in mercury which generated important exchanges between Europe and America over the centuries. The two sites represent the two largest mercury mines in the world and were operational until recent times.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1313/

Fabienne also sent me two extras! Although I already had cards from these sites, they are really great and show inside views, which I didn't have yet. The first card shows Aranjuez:

The Aranjuez cultural landscape is an entity of complex relationships: between nature and human activity, between sinuous watercourses and geometric landscape design, between the rural and the urban, between forest landscape and the delicately modulated architecture of its palatial buildings.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1044

The second card shows the Monastery of El Escorial. 

Built at the end of the 16th century on a plan in the form of a grill, the instrument of the martyrdom of St Lawrence, the Escurial Monastery stands in an exceptionally beautiful site in Castile. Its austere architecture, a break with previous styles, had a considerable influence on Spanish architecture for more than half a century. It was the retreat of a mystic king and became, in the last years of Philip II's reign, the centre of the greatest political power of the time.

Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/318

Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, Italy

This is a new addition to my Unesco collection. It shows Orta, which is one of the nine "Sacri Monti" in the northern region of Italy. It was sent by aj-person.

One of my personal goals is to complete at least Italy and I'm happy because this place is not so easy to get :)

The nine Sacri Monti (Sacred Mountains) of northern Italy are groups of chapels and other architectural features created in the late 16th and 17th centuries and dedicated to different aspects of the Christian faith. In addition to their symbolic spiritual meaning, they are of great beauty by virtue of the skill with which they have been integrated into the surrounding natural landscape of hills, forests and lakes. They also house much important artistic material in the form of wall paintings and statuary.
Source: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1068/

Cards from Lisbon

As I told in the last post, last weekend I attended the Postcrossing International Meeting in Lisbon. Actually, I don't have many cards from Lisbon, since I only buy them to send to other people. This time, I decided to buy some for my own collection and even found some cards that I had never seen before. Here are some of them:

Lisbon's harbor and the Monument to the Discoveries in the background.

D. Pedro IV Square (or Rossio, one of the most famous squares in Lisbon) and D. Maria Theatre.

My favourite belvedere in Lisbon, Miradouro de S. Pedro de Alcântara. From this point, you can see all Lisbon's downtown down to the river and the Castle of S. Jorge.

One of the main squares in Lisbon's downtown, Praça da Figueira (the first card I see from it).

Downtown and 25th April Bridge in the background.

Another view of the bridge and our "copy" of Cristo Redentor (called Cristo Rei).

Old street in Lisbon, as seen from the front window of one of the typical trams.

I love Lisbon's old buildings!

It wouldn't be Lisbon without the yellow trams :-)

Special official card

Last weekend (9th-10th June) there was an International Postcrossing Meeting in Lisbon. I already knew some of the postcrossers who attended and it is always fun to meet them again, and I met some others who I knew only from the forum.
In between all the sightseeing, eating and postcard shopping, there was a surprise: Astrid1978 hand-delivered me an official card, NL-1114821!

It was already expired since she had sent me a previous one that I never received :-( But it was a really funny moment when she gave me this second card and it will have a special place in my collection! Thanks Astrid! :-)

Masouleh, Iran

This was my first and, for now, only card from Iran. I got it in June 2009 from a private trade through the main Postcrossing site with a user named Yasi. It shows the Historical City of Masouleh, a UNESCO Tentative Site.

The pictoresque village of Masouleh imbedded in the mountains of Northern Iran, is a cultural heritage landmark on UNESCO's World Heritage List. What is so amazing about this village, besides it's beauty, is that the roofs of the houses also serve as the streets of the village.
from: http://www.worldisround.com