Lamplight

2002: Visit Austria (Design - Adolf (Adi) Tuma)

A warm glow in a winding alleyway called Schönlaaterngasse (Beautiful Lantern Alley) in central Vienna. The beautiful lantern in question is outside number 7 but the original wrought iron creation  is in Vienna's City Museum and only a copy shines here. The Schönlaterngasse has appeared 4 times on Austria's stamps and also more excitingly for me in Carol Reed's movie The Third Man.  Shadowy people and places filmed in 1948 on location in a postwar Vienna.  Today there is a Third Man walking tour, I imagine the catchy zither sound track running for ever in my head during that, and yes the tour includes the sewers.

1979: 300th Anniversary of Street Lighting (Design - Finke)

Meanwhile in Berlin more than half the world's existing gas lights illuminate the streets and the stamp's Gas Lamp is in the Kruezberg District but since 2013 they are being demolished and only 3,200 out of 37,000 will be preserved although there is a residents action to try to save them.

1996: Images of Germany (Design - Schillinger)

I imagine this chandelier type lamp is also gas lit and shines on what is considered one of Berlin's most beautiful squares, Gendarmennmarkt.

1948: Airmail - Explorers and Inventors (Design - Légrády Sándor)

Of course Thomas Edison would definitely be for electric lights.  A motion picture is beaming out in the background and happily giving me another 'L' by showing a view of the Statue of Liberty.

2004: Bordeaux (Design - Claude Andreotto; Engraving - Claude Jumelet)

Here the lights are on the Pont de Pierre which crosses the Gironde River at Bordeaux. Planned and designed on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte (although only eventually competed in 1822) its 17 arches are said to be for the number of letters in his name.  Although the stamp seems to show the tram on another bridge it actually runs over the Pont de Pierre but the condition of the bridge means that all traffic has been banned since 2016 with the exception of pedestrians, cyclists and the tram-line. 

1981: Huis ten Bosch

Lastly lamplight leads us here to the 17th Century Royal Palace in The Hague,  one of three official residencies of the Dutch royal family and since 1984 the Dutch monarchs office for political and state affairs.

Ammonite Lamp Post at Dusk, Lyme Regis (Jurassic Coast)

Sunday Stamps II prompt this week is the Letter L - here for Lamps, lamplight and liberty -  lots more at See It On A Postcard