Rising in Moorish-Byzantine splendor against a pale Parisian sky, the original Palais du Trocadéro dominates this early photographic postcard — its twin minarets, sweeping colonnade, and great central dome photographed from the garden approach in a composition that captures the full theatrical ambition of the building commissioned for the 1878 Exposition Universelle. Today the Trocadéro is gone, replaced in 1937 by the Palais de Chaillot for the World's Fair, making this pre-demolition image a genuine piece of lost Paris. Publisher B.F. of Paris — Bibliothèque de la France or the well-known "BF Paris" postcard house — issued this as card no. 45 in a Paris landmarks series, with light blue-gray tinting applied to the photographic base. The address-only undivided back, printed exclusively in French ("Ce côté est exclusivement réservé à l'adresse"), dates this card firmly to before 1904, when divided backs became standard in France.