HATCHES
As the face of the world's cities
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During one of our travels, we noticed that an ordinary sewer manhole is one of the symbols of the city. And now, traveling around the cities of the world, we very often photograph such manholes and now present you with our collection. We plan to replenish it regularly, and we began this report with our beloved Kiev , where Kiy, Shchek, Khoryv and their sister Lybid are in the first photo. And the next square manhole is from Lithuanian Klaipeda :
Bratislava surprised with a combination of a manhole and a storm drain. Here's how it's done in Slovakia :
German Memmingen combined the square shape and the city coat of arms with openings for storm drains:
The Italian city of Bergamo , from where we traveled to Varenna , adheres to the same philosophy:
In Cape Verde, the level of the economy does not yet allow making hatches with the names of cities. Therefore, we will indicate: on the left - Murdeira , and on the right - Santa Maria , towns of the island of Sal.
The hatch in Hanover is a classic German example: a coat of arms, an inscription and a storm drain along the entire radius.
The Lithuanian resort town of Palanga is in the same style as Klaipeda : a square with the name of the city, a coat of arms, but without openings for storm drains.
But Poland apparently does not have such uniform standards, since the manholes in Gdansk (left) and Sopot (right) differ in shape and the presence of openings for draining rainwater.
Continuing our collection: a wonderful example from Latvia , or more precisely from its capital Riga .
And the largest city of Scandinavia, Stockholm, is represented in our selection by three samples. One of them has a crown, the second has a "head in a crown", and the third has the letters "BB", which I always consider an invitation to come to this city again. Here is the same combination of letters from Vienna .
We are expanding our collection with a wonderful exhibit. Luke from Hulhumale , the closest city to the capital of the Maldives Republic, Male.
The city of Kharkov from Ukraine adds two unique hatches to our feed: the zero kilometer of the Southern Railway and the hatch from the Constitution Square, which tells about the oldest squares of the city.
The Albanian city of Vlora expands our collection with a manhole with a drain in the middle, in a dense cement frame.
Sunny Dubai is decorated with sunshades stylized as rays of the sun.
And this is how tourists are delighted in the resort capital of Thailand - Pattaya . The hatch was photographed right on the famous entertainment street "Walking Street".
Walking around Almaty , we found a specimen that stands out only for my initials: V.K.
When you find yourself in Cyprus , you are very likely to come across such a rectangular hatch with stylized lightning bolts on the picture.
We brought another example from Krakow. This is the city of Polish kings, where the main royal palace of Poland is located, which is called Wawel . And this hatch is signed quite pompously: The drain of the royal city of Krakow!
But where the serious people are, it is in the city of Kamyanets-Podilskyi , you can't fool around here! If you want to steal a manhole in this city, the threat will accompany you all the way to the metal collection point, since this warning is located right on the manhole itself.
In Catania , which represents Sicilian Italy , there are apparently no such complications, so here they simply indicate that the hatch belongs to the city commune and was mass-produced in one thousand nine hundred ... But in what year exactly - only the commune itself knows :-)
The famous city of Palermo , in Sicily , considers it important to place its coat of arms in the form of an eagle with lowered wings on the manhole covers, and calls the water supply system in the city beautifully - an aqueduct!
From our trip to Scandinavia we brought the following two specimens to our collection.
Manhole covers from the capital of Finland, Helsinki, look like this:
In the city of Brussels , which is the capital of Belgium , we searched for a long time for a memorable manhole, but found only one like this, surrounded by greenery.
But Leipzig was remembered for its classic manhole with many holes for draining water and the coat of arms of the cultural capital of Germany . But the main impression is connected with the fact that it was in Leipzig that we got acquainted with the largest manhole in the history of our observations, it was not embarrassing to take a photo next to it yourself 😉
Continuing the story about manholes around the world, I want you to see the most unusual manhole that we managed to find in Poland . This is Luc Besson 😉, whose iron square we found in Krakow along with the fingerprints of the famous director.
A new discovery of Ukraine , made in Kiev , depicts a monument to Bohdan Khmelnytsky near St. Sophia Cathedral on Vladimirskaya Street.
And from a trip to Antalya , we brought back a simple and straightforward example of a hatch from a Turkish manufacturer.
Bright and very memorable Paphos , the one in Cyprus - did not surprise with hatches either. Yes, there are some patterns, but nothing special.
But Prague in the Czech Republic is a great place! There are different types of hatches, and a coat of arms with three towers on each, regardless of whether it is round or rectangular, or whether there are drainage holes or not.
The hatch from the capital of Lithuania , our beloved Vilnius , continues the tradition of nice, but not very flashy examples of our collection. Even the hatch from the famous song field does not stand out for its brightness and originality.
But the capital of Germany , the magnificent Berlin , tried to display many of its sights on a manhole cover. And for such a creative approach, +100 to its karma!
When we moved to the other hemisphere of the earth, the local hatches seemed very simple and straightforward to us. Here, for example, is our collector's item from the Dominican fishing village of Bahia Ibe .
The capital of the Dominican Republic was a little more creative, but also very simple.
In Santo Domingo, a city of two million, the manhole covers depicted a tap and a huge drop.
And in the next photo is a very rare specimen that we got in Chernobyl . This place is famous all over the world, where we were able to get to by buying tickets six months in advance.
After the outbreak of coronavirus and a long quarantine, Turkey was the first to open its doors to us. We took advantage of this, adding a hatch from the most Greek of Turkish cities - Bodrum - to the collection.
The Turkish collection continues with a hatch from the resort town of Kemer .
In 2020, Turkey was one of the few countries where you could travel. And we managed to pop into the capital - beautiful Ankara . The next hatch is from there.
And again we are transported to the Dominican Republic . An example from the main resort of the country, the city of Punta Cana . There, the streets are often flooded by tropical downpours, so storm drains are needed like nowhere else.
Don't be confused by the inscription on the next exhibit, but this is Ukraine , and the photo was taken in the famous Truskavets . It's a bit unusual that in the city there is a manhole with the inscription Kerch, and the monument in the video from Truskavets is about Rio de Janeiro ;-)
Representatives of the Ukrainian Hutsulshchyna are not inferior in pathos to the best examples of hatches from the imperial cities of Poland , Germany and Hungary . Ivano-Frankivsk and Kolomyia for your attention.
We update the collection approximately every six months, so subscribe to our blog. More to come...
