Ponte Vecchio in the 19th century

I hope you like this late 19th century photograph of Ponte Vecchio in Florence,

hand coloured by me:

Yokohama in the 1880s

Yokohama was an important port city already in the 19th century. This is a photograph from the 1880s, hand coloured by me:

Here is some additional information about Yokohama:

Yokohama,, officially the City of Yokohama, is the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo, and most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area.
Yokohama's population of 3.7 million makes it Japan's largest incorporated city.^[2] Yokohama developed rapidly as Japan's prominent port city following the end of Japan's relative isolation in the mid-19th century, and is today one of its major ports along with Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Hakata, Tokyo, and Chiba. (Wiki)

Soprano Christina Nilsson (19th century photograph)

Here is an early portrait of the great 19th century Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson. Colour added by me:

Additional information about Christina Nilsson from Wikipedia:

Christina Nilsson, Countess de Casa Miranda, (20 August 1843 – 20 November 1921) was a Swedish operatic soprano. She possessed a brilliant bel canto technique and was considered a rival to the Victorian era's most famous diva, Adelina Patti. --

Christina Nilsson was born Kristina Jonasdotter in the village of Sjöabol, near Växjö, Småland, to the peasants Jonas Nilsson and Cajsa-Stina Månsdotter. From her earliest years, she demonstrated vocal talent.^[1] She taught herself to play on the violin and flute, and sang in the peasants' fairs in Sweden with her brother. She was discovered by a prominent civil servant when, aged 14, she was performing at a market in Ljungby. He soon became her patron, enabling her to have vocal training. She was a pupil of Franz Berwald for two years.

In 1860, she gave concerts in Stockholm and Uppsala. After four years' study in Paris, she had her operatic début 1864 as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris.^[1] After this success she sang at major opera houses in London, Saint Petersburg, Vienna and New York. She also appeared in the Metropolitan Opera's inaugural performance on October 22, 1883 in Gounod's Faust.
Christina Nilsson was married in Westminster Abbey to the French banker Auguste Rouzaud, who later died in 1882. In 1887 she married Angel Ramon Maria Vallejo y Miranda, Count de Casa Miranda, who died in 1902.^[1] In correspondence, Nilsson often signed her first name as Christine, and during the last part of her life she was generally known as the Countess de Casa Miranda.
She died in Växjö, Sweden in 1921. Unfortunately, unlike Patti, she never made gramophone recordings of her voice.

Imperial Russia in colour

Here are five old photographs from imperial Russia. I have tried to make them a little more lively by adding colour:

Tsar Nicholas and Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (1905 official photograph)

Portrait of Maxim Gorky (about  1905)

Dmitri Trepov, Governor-General of St. Petersburg (1905)

A guard in St. Petersburg during the revolutionary year 1905.

Tsar Nicholas II on his morning ride (1905).

Constantinople in the 1890s

I found this photograph of Constantinople (now Istambul) in a book published in 1898. I tried to make the photo a little bit "livelier" by adding colour to it. I hope you like it!:

Constantinople and the Bosphorus in the 1890s.

Spring is here!

Today was the "official" opening of the Spring season for me; I saw the first

Winter Aconites and Snowdrops ... :-)

"Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment."

                                    Ellis Peters

HMS D4 - A British early 20th century submarine

The photograph was published in 1911 in the Swedish weekly magazine Hvar 8 Dag. Processing and colouring from 2016

HMS D4 was a British D class submarine built by Vickers, Barrow. D4 was laid down on 24 February 1910, launched 27 April 1911 and was commissioned on 29 November 1911. She was the first submarine to be fitted with a gun for offensive use.

During D4's career, she sank the grounded the German netlayer Bielefeld in the Heligoland Bight, on 15 June 1915.

Later in her career, D4 torpedoed UB-72 on 12 May 1918. At 04:30 that day, whilst on patrol approximately midway between Guernsey and Portland Bill, D4 observed UB72 on the surface travelling in a southerly direction some two miles distant. Five minutes later Lt Claud Barry in command of D4 saw UB72, obviously unaware of the British boat's presence, alter course so that the U-boat appeared to be approaching D4. In order that his presence should not be detected Lt Barry lowered his periscope for a few minutes but at 0443 D4's periscope was raised to reveal UB72 steering an easterly course. A few minutes later UB72 was on the British boat's port side and Barry waited until the U-boat came on to his sights. At 0450 Lt Barry fired a torpedo 600 yards from target and after lowering periscope for a few moments he released a second one. Ten seconds later the crew of D4 heard an explosion and felt a violent concussion. Barry brought his boat to the surface and headed towards three men swimming in a patch of oil. He succeeded in picking up these men, who were the only survivors of UB72's crew of three officers and thirty-one men.

D4 was decommissioned in 1919 and was then sold on 17 December 1921 to H Pounds, Portsmouth. (Wiki)