Old Paris Postcards from the Great Flood of 1910

This week we’ve been talking about the massive flood in Paris from 1910.

We started with a podcast episode featuring Jeffrey Jackson, Professor of History at Rhodes College, and the author of “Paris Under Water:  How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910”. You can find more about Jeffrey on his website here.

Listen to the episode below, where F is for Floods in the ABC-season, and where the music is from Pres Maxson.

Then, we shared all the places you can find the flood markers today in Paris that show how high the water level rose. Explore those addresses and pictures here.

But now, you might be wondering more about the old postcards that showed the flood. Luckily for us all, they’re so old that they’ve passed out of copyright, so here’s a big collection of them.

Look closely for street names and arrondissements, and sometimes you can even see dates on the stamps. Fascinating to see how quickly these postcards were produced, out in action within days of the flood’s beginning!

If you’re ever looking to find one of these postcards yourself, they’re often quite easy to track down at the flea markets or Seine Booksellers (les bouquinistes). Often as cheap as one euro, they make for a great Paris souvenir that’s very easy to slip into your suitcase on the way home.

If you’re looking for more info on the flood, a good place to start is this week’s podcast episode, or indeed the book written by this week’s guest Jeffrey Jackson. He has a post on his website with more pictures from the flood, check it here.

Well, that’s it! Happy postcard hunting. If you enjoy these blog posts, become a Patreon member of The Earful Tower here to support this channel and get extras.

If you’ve not listened to the podcast, please do! This Flood topic was the F part of a full alphabet season. Last week was E for Eiffel Tower.

Lastly, book a walking tour of Paris, or indeed the Louvre, via our official tour page on The Earful Tower here.