Today we have two postcards based on photographs taken on virtually the same spot, just a few years apart. The location is the great arches through which road traffic passes enroute from place du Carrousel on to the Quai François Mitterand. Two open-top vehicles pass – one with four wheels and eight legs, the other with four wheels and twelve legs. The vehicle on the right has trundled up from Porte de Versailles on the southern fringe of the 15th. arrondissement via rue de Sèvres and passing Saint-Germain des Près on the way. An elegant touch is the provision of colour-co-ordinated teams of horses. In the second card, the stench of dung gives way to the smell of petrol as one of Paris’s first double-decker motor buses heads south through the archway. The bus is a Brillié-Schneider P2 introduced in 1906 and probably travelling from Montmartre to Saint-Germain des Près. These new buses were built by recycling the coachwork from redundant horse-drawn vehicles. The interest in these cards is due to the photographer waiting for the buses to enter the viewfinder before taking the photo – without the buses we would be left with a dull and undistinguished view. Even today there are five RATP bus routes that pass through the arches.
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