Design Destinations: Cities That Inspire Vintage Posters

Certain cities live in the imagination not just for what they are, but for how they have been pictured. They are more than streets, skylines, or landscapes. They are images refined by artists, printed on paper, and hung on walls. Vintage posters captured these places with bold lines and vivid colors, shaping how the world saw them. Nearly a century later, they remain icons of design, their visual heritage as alive as ever.

To explore these posters is to travel through art history as much as geography. From Paris to the Alps, from the French Riviera to New York and the American West, each place became a canvas. Their posters were invitations to travel, but today they serve as reminders of how design can define a destination.

Paris: The City of Light in Print

Paris has always been more than a city. It is a stage for culture, romance, and art. Poster artists of the early 1900s distilled that identity into images that were at once modern and timeless. The boulevards lined with cafés, the lights along the Seine, the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower—all became subjects for bold compositions.

Artists like Cassandre and Paul Colin leaned into geometry and type, turning Parisian nightlife into visions of energy. Others highlighted travel to the capital, where trains and ships carried the promise of arrival at the center of style.

To hang a Paris poster today is to bring that elegance home. It is not nostalgia, but a statement of refinement. In a living room or study, the city’s posters suggest culture, taste, and the promise of movement. The visual heritage of Paris is its ability to always feel current, no matter how much time passes.

St. Moritz: The Alpine Playground

Few places embody the glamour of the Alps like St. Moritz. Posters from the 1920s and 30s showed skiers leaning into turns, sunlight gleaming off snow, and hotels perched above frozen lakes. The artists who created them understood that they were selling not just a place, but a lifestyle. To visit St. Moritz was to step into a world of elegance and sport.

Martin Peikert captured this balance with playful figures in motion. Donald Brun gave the mountains a sense of charm. Together they made the Swiss Alps into more than geography. They made them a destination of desire.

Today, a framed poster of St. Moritz in a home or chalet carries that same blend of sophistication and adventure. Its colors and composition bring freshness to a room, its imagery carrying both history and vitality. The visual heritage of St. Moritz is not only Alpine scenery, but the idea that leisure and design can live side by side.

The French Riviera: Sun, Sea, and Style

The Riviera was perhaps the most celebrated canvas for poster artists. Roger Broders painted it with clarity and bold color, showing sunlit cliffs, deep blue seas, and figures in relaxed poses. His posters turned the Riviera into more than a coastline. They made it an idea, a dream of summer where time slowed and light lingered.

These posters carried a modernist precision. Clean lines, saturated colors, and a focus on elegance defined them. They spoke not just of travel but of taste. To go to the Riviera was to live well, and the posters promised that with every brushstroke.

Placed in interiors today, Riviera posters bring warmth and brightness. They belong in beach houses and city apartments alike, their blue and gold tones carrying a sense of calm. They are reminders of summers that feel endless, of coastlines that remain iconic. The visual heritage of the Riviera is its ability to embody leisure, beauty, and refinement all at once.

New York: The City of Modernity

If Paris was the city of light and romance, New York became the city of power and progress. Posters from the mid-twentieth century showed its skyline rising higher each year, its ports filled with ships, its avenues alive with energy. Cassandre’s famous designs for ocean liners often placed New York as the destination, its skyscrapers standing like promises on the horizon.

The city’s identity was captured in bold geometry and shadow. The poster artists saw New York not only as a place, but as a symbol of modernity. Its skyline became shorthand for ambition and speed.

To display a New York poster in a home is to channel that energy. It adds edge to interiors, a reminder of movement, commerce, and culture. Its visual heritage is progress itself, an image of the future drawn nearly a century ago but still alive today.

The American West: Myth and Memory

The American West carried a different kind of poster heritage. It was less about cities and more about landscapes, less about elegance and more about scale. Posters for railroads and national parks in the 1930s showed vast canyons, towering cliffs, and open plains. The Works Progress Administration employed artists to depict these places with bold colors and simplified forms, creating a style that was both modernist and deeply American.

These posters sold the idea of the West as frontier and wonder. They invited travelers to board trains, to explore national parks, to see landscapes that seemed almost beyond imagination.

In modern interiors, posters of the American West bring vastness and calm. A Grand Canyon print can open a small room with its sense of scale. A Yosemite poster brings natural majesty into a home. The visual heritage of the West lies in its ability to suggest both freedom and permanence.

Design Destinations in the Home

Together, these destinations show the power of design to define place. Paris offered elegance, St. Moritz adventure, the Riviera leisure, New York progress, and the West wonder. Their posters were not only advertisements but works of art that still resonate today.

When brought into modern homes, they add more than decoration. They carry stories. A Riviera poster above a dining table recalls long summer evenings. A New York print in an office speaks of ambition. A West poster in a living room brings balance and calm. The design heritage of these cities and landscapes continues to live through the art that first defined them.

Bringing the Heritage Home

At Être Studios, we believe in more than decoration. Our reproductions are printed with archival inks on museum-grade paper, framed with care, and chosen for their ability to bring authenticity into homes. Each poster carries the legacy of a destination and the artistry of the designers who made them.

To live with these works is to live with history and beauty at once. It is to bring the world closer, to let travel live on your walls even when you are home. The cities and landscapes that inspired vintage posters still inspire today, and their art remains a way to keep that inspiration alive.

Explore our collections of Paris, St. Moritz, the French Riviera, New York, and the American West. Each piece is more than a print. It is a story, a memory, and an invitation.