A warm amber evening light seems to glow from the half-timbered façade of Bacharach's famous Altes Haus — the beloved 1368 timber-frame gem on the Rhine, its jettied upper stories and pointed turret rising above vine-draped ground-floor arches while a few unhurried figures stroll the cobbled lane below, the dark Rhineland hills pressing in from behind in this richly painted reproduction by Cologne publisher Hoursch & Bechstedt. The back of the card notes in German that the Altes Haus is "one of the finest jewels of old-German architecture on the Rhine," built in 1368 and deemed of such architectural importance that it was restored at state and provincial expense in 1897 — a restoration that saved one of the Rhine Valley's most photographed and painted landmarks for future generations. Published in the "Astudin-Karten vom Rhein" series (No. 122) by Hoursch & Bechstedt of Cologne, a highly regarded fine-art postcard house whose Rhine series remains popular with collectors today, this unused card is a gem of early Wilhelmine art-postcard production, its oil-painting-style colour reproduction still vivid and unfaded after more than a century.