What Odd/Interesting European architectural (or similar) details have you observed?
 

What odd/interesting/unique details have you seen in Europe. [This topic probably has been covered in different threads, but I'm missing Europe and have no trip planned.]

I had a staircase in Haarlem that was only a few degrees from being a vertical ladder. It was that steep.

Of course, there are the the blue flies in the Netherland urinals.

I asked about this previously, but the small indentations near the ground outside doorways in Bruges (for cleaning off shoes/boots).

Not particularly unusual, but the light timers in some small hotels can leave you in a dark hallway.

Not sure why they are like this, but some of the doors in Europe (maybe just france?) have the knob in the center of the door.

Care to share?

My (door)knob is in the center.

Maybe a little session of caryatids and telamones will cheer you up? ---> http://tinyurl.com/yh5oo79

Thank you! Forgive me, but the police station telamones remind me more of some kind of fascist architecture.

Kind of interesting to see the juxtaposition of the "Journal of Soir" (evening?) and caryatides, and what appears to now be a corner market.

The blue flys are a copy of good old Mr Crapper's bees (which in Latin are "Apis" which if pronounced carefully is what you do.

Lauze roofs in the Périgord.

I think in Rothenberg among the red tiles in the roof, there were also clear ones (presumably to allow light in). Not skylights, but just clear tile.

Two features of most British cities:

- in affluent English urban residential streets with purpose-built houses dating from before about 1900, the circular cast iron lid in the ground in front of each multistorey house, through which coal was delivered (the poor lived in tenement blocks or one-up, one-down house with no basement). They're almost all exceptionally elaborate, astonishingly varied and there's a monograph on them I keep meaning to read.

- in all houses built before May 1840: spot how large a proportion of front doors are original by the placement and workmanship of the letterbox. Within a few years of the introduction of the Universal Penny Post, virtually the entire national stock of front doors had a letterbox retrofitted. by sawing a space out and surrounding it with a brass or iron outline.

Don't all urban front doors, if they have an exterior knob, have it in the middle?

flanner, not in the us. Ours are usually on the left or right (Maybe right on the exterior side). I suppose it is for leverage and right handed folks?? It also allows for an incorporated tongue/latch operated by the knob (without drilling all the way into the middle of the door).

"t also allows for an incorporated tongue/latch operated by the knob "

Isn't that what the lock's for?

All urban front doors here in DC have the knob on the right. Same in the rural French village where my house is.

Flanner, I don't know how yours operates. We have "deadbolts" which are often independent of the knob. But we also have latches that are incorporated into the handle/knob and the latch is operated by a twist of the knob or press of a tongue.

example

http://handymanbill.hubpages.com/hub...rior-door-lock

There are entire sections of Paris that do not look a bit like Paris. I always wonder how visitors deal with this when they pop out of the metro in such an area.

http://anyportinastorm.proboards.com...ay&thread=4802