Street lamps

Yesterday was Father’s (and Grandfather’s) Day, so I had little time left for thinking about blogging. Here is just a collection of different photos from all over Paris of street lamps.

These last years a lot of attention has been given to maintain the original style of these lamps, considering that they play an important role for the decoration of our streets and open places. Many of them have been refreshed, repainted… Some of them may even be quite new, but in a design that fits to the architecture around them.

There were some rules about the need to lighten the streets which more seriously started to be applied during the 16th century, more or less based on oil lamps that the habitants were supposed to put in their windows, certain hours and months. During the 17th century, real street lamps started to be quite common. This meant a lot for the security and safety and led to the beginning of a real “Paris by night”-life. Gas lighting became common as from the beginning of the 19th century, but my report about the lamp post at Place de la Concorde (June 11) mentioned that electricity was introduced already in 1844. Today of course everything is electric (but I understand that modern gas lighting still can be found in some major cities around the world).