Postcard Gavarnie, Brèche de Roland, Pyrenees, Lévy et Neurdein Paris

French postcard from the nineteen-twenties or thirties showing a black-and-white phototype of the Brèche de Roland, the natural gap at 2,804 metres elevation in the Cirque de Gavarnie in the Pyrenees. The composition shows four mountain walkers with staves on the snowfield at the foot of the gap, with the monumental limestone walls rising on either side. Beneath the image, the caption reads "62 GAVARNIE. — La Brèche de Roland (2.804 m). — LL." Published by Lévy et Neurdein Réunis, 44 Rue Letellier in Paris. The verso is unwritten and unposted. The card is in good condition.

The Brèche de Roland is one of the most iconic formations of the Pyrenees: a rectangular opening of about forty metres wide and one hundred metres high in the rock wall dividing France from Spain. According to medieval legend, the gap was cleaved by the paladin Roland, who in his dying hour at Roncevaux tried to break the mountain with his sword Durandal so that the weapon would not fall into Saracen hands. The formation became in the nineteenth century a favoured destination for Pyrenees alpinists and remained so through the interwar period, when Gavarnie established itself as one of the principal mountain tourism centres of south-west France. The firm Lévy Fils et Cie merged in 1920 with Neurdein Frères to form Lévy et Neurdein Réunis, placing this card in the two decades that followed.