The International Association of Amateur Heralds

On the central Station in Amsterdam there are several coats of arms depicted of place to where one can go with the train.

London, Amsterdam and Berlin



more pictures on the way

well when the flags fly in the city they look ok

next one : Paris, Brussels and Antwerp

Sadly the CoA of Brussels seems to have been consigned to the city rubbish dump in 1991 as Wiki shows Brussels as having an "emblem" which apparently depicts a blue iris:



The flag being the same emblem on a plain blue ground.

The CoA depicting the Archangel Michael killing the dragon takes a tilt at the "no colour on colour" convention:

The arms of Paris must be among the oldest city arms, dating back to 1111. The greater version is unusual in having three orders dependant:

Dear Ton,

If "On the central Station in Amsterdam there are several coats of arms depicted of place to where one can go with the train." why are the arms of London included?

Architecturally, the station was built well before there was a direct link with London!

Thank you for the photographs.

Regards,

Iain Boyd

If "On the central Station in Amsterdam there are several coats of arms depicted of place to where one can go with the train." why are the arms of London included?

The Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij was probably stretching a point, but there would certainly have been boat trains to Hoek van Holland (Haven) station connecting with ferries to Harwich (Parkeston Quay) and thence to London (Liverpool Street) by Great Eastern. Whether any carriages made the journey across the North Sea I doubt as the Dutch loading gauge is more generous than the British. There is still a service called Dutchflyer on this route.

Chris Green wrote:Sadly the CoA of Brussels seems to have been consigned to the city rubbish dump in 1991 as Wiki shows Brussels as having an "emblem" which apparently depicts a blue iris

This is the emblem of the Brussels Region, not of the municipality itself. The city of Brussels (Bruxelles-Ville, Stad Brussel) still bears the traditional arms of St. Michael subduing Lucifer, and flies the flag derived therefrom, a horizontal bicolor, green over red, with the victorious and fallen archangels silhouetted in yellow.

JMcMillan wrote:

Chris Green wrote:Sadly the CoA of Brussels seems to have been consigned to the city rubbish dump in 1991 as Wiki shows Brussels as having an "emblem" which apparently depicts a blue iris

This is the emblem of the Brussels Region, not of the municipality itself. The city of Brussels (Bruxelles-Ville, Stad Brussel) still bears the traditional arms of St. Michael subduing Lucifer, and flies the flag derived therefrom, a horizontal bicolor, green over red, with the victorious and fallen archangels silhouetted in yellow.

I have fallen into exactly the same trap as people who confuse the City of London with Greater London - although I lived in Brussels for three years. Well actually I lived in Evere, not Brussels. You see how easily one gets confused!

next one: Madrid, Rome and Marseille, note that Rome has a wolf with romulus and remus and not the present SPQR with cross arms.

The arms shown with a bordure gules were never the arms of Madrid. In 1889 when Amsterdam's railway station was built the arms of Madrid were:



The earlier arms, before the augmentations of honour granted in 1859 were:



My first thought was that the plaque at the station had at some point been repainted by someone who didn't know much about heraldry. But since the plaques seem to be composed of fired tiles, this seems not to be the case. Perhaps it was simply that the person charged with collecting the information to provide to those making the tiles made a mistake, or the tile-makers misread his notes.

The tree in the CoA is a strawberry tree. That can't be right I thought. Strawberries grow on bushes. But there is such a tree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbutus_unedo