Lions of Europe

I spent most of May and a good part of June travelling Europe with my husband – it was a wonderful, wonderful vacation: we ate our way through loads of good food; we drank too much and walked 10-12 hours a day. We visited Paris, London, Florence, Rome and finally my city of birth, Bucharest. We came back thin, exhausted, enthralled and with some 3000+ photographs, which I’ll now have to sort out. Only fair, I took most of them. New camera. Couldn’t help myself.

Anyways, while making full use of my new zoom lens I took more than 100 photos of lions, all around Europe. I don’t think I ever appreciated how important the lion is in the art and heraldry of Europe until I started noticing it everywhere.

It became a game of “spot the lion” wherever we went (and spot the cool type, and spot the urban art – the results of those in future posts), from the famous Medici lions, to Florence’s Marzocco , the three lions of the British royal family and countless apparitions in paintings, ornamentation and sculptures everywhere. Including on a XVth century map. As a side note, the cartographers of the Middle Ages used “Hic sunt leones” (latin for “Here be lions”) to mark unexplored territories).

There are loads of photos after the jump, please be patient while they load.

Florence

Paris

London