Tiny figures climb and descend the vast cascade of stone as the monumental staircase of Gare Saint-Charles sweeps down toward the city of Marseille — one of the great civic theatrical gestures of interwar France. Completed in 1926 and designed by architects Sénès and Arnal, the 104-step grand escalier is flanked by allegorical sculpture and palm trees, here captured in a crisp overhead view that makes the scale breathtaking. Someone named Van sent this card on 13 December 1932, stamped at the Marseille-Gare post office, addressed to a Monsieur Masse traveling to Aïn Séba via Casablanca, Morocco — a routing that speaks volumes about the colonial postal networks of the era and the movement of people between metropolitan France and French-protectorate Morocco.