Bicycle and Tulips, Amsterdam · Travel Poster

Not just a view, the heritage behind it. Ella writes about the place, its hidden history, and the details that never make it into the guidebooks, all printed on the poster.

The flower everyone thinks of as quintessentially Dutch started out as a wild mountain plant from Kazakhstan, in the Tien Shan range. It travelled through Persian poetry and into Ottoman palace gardens centuries before it ever reached the Netherlands in the late 1500s, carried along Ottoman trade routes. Once it arrived, the Dutch took it further than anyone, so far that between 1634 and 1637 a single bulb could sell for more than a house, a bubble now remembered as tulip mania. The flower's Dutch reputation is only a few hundred years old. Its actual roots are a continent away.

An original illustration, available in colour or black and white, created for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.

Please note that, to protect the original artwork from copyright infringement, the images shown on this website are low resolution. The poster you receive is printed in high resolution, with all the detail and clarity of the original.