Many of Stockholm’s old buildings, especially in the Old Town, used to serve as storehouses/merchants’ houses, and thus remnants of the hoist systems can still be found.

A sampling of Stockholm’s various kinds of guard stones. Stone Cannon Pipes Finding these only confirmed that the cannon that I saw in Riga were indeed used as guard stones Next to this cannon is a rune stone, which is 1,000 years old. More info about it here. Metal

Most of the buildings in Stockholm’s Old Town are still adorned with fire marks – plaques that showed that a building was insured in case of a fire. The signs, which depict a phoenix rising from the flames, were introduced in the 1740s. In the event of a fire, the fire brigade would […]

Today I was very sad to discover that my favorite Soviet sign has vanished. This lovely fox sign, a remnant of a Soviet-era fur studio, used to protrude from my building, but as of recently, it’s been removed (and rather mysteriously I’d say because the storefront has been empty for […]

Stockholm has a wide range of anchor plates — of all shapes and sizes, spanning back at least to the seventeenth century. My favorite is the one that looks like an owl: A collage of the various kinds of plates that can be found in Stockholm:  I found several examples […]

Anti-toilets or urine deflectors were placed in a city’s building corners to prevent people from urinating on the street. Such a solution to urban hygiene has been used for centuries, as, for example, can be seen in ancient Venice. Here pissottas (“pee bumps”) were installed as can be seen here and here. […]

Boot Scrapers Conscriptions Numbers Guard Stones Various

Traces of the past in Klosterneuburg, an ancient town right outside of Vienna. Boot Scraper Guard Stones Hoisting Beam for Lifting Goods Building Number and Conscription Number Metal Shutter

Historic street signs still adorn many of Vienna’s buildings — at least, I assume the rectangular and oval metal plaques with building number and street name date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they look very similar to Lviv’s prewar street signs. Unlike in Lviv, the official language […]

Many of the old conscription numbers can still be found in Vienna, usually on plaques located inside a building’s entrance on the left-hand side near the door or above the second portal near the stairwell. House numbering was introduced in Europe in the eighteenth century (before that houses usually had […]