YUROP

Omg! One of my obsessions!!!

Whenever I travel somewhere, as a souvenir, I buy the local design of playing cards. Even within the colour-regions there are many variations. I might be biased because I’m dutch, but the Dutch Cut is one of my favourites, because of the architecture on the aces!

In Italy every region has their own design! (Even within the ones shown in this map.)

This surprised me when I was younger. Heart, diamond, spade, and club seemed so foreign to me. For the record, in Spain we call them copas (cups), oros (coins (literally golds)), bastos (clubs), and espadas (swords).

Also, the pictures used in the map are not the most commonly used ones here. this (top row) is what most cards use

I heard about this, and I was excited to pick up a different style when I went to Germany. I got there, and all of the cards used the standard, international suits. No one knew what I was talking about.

Huh. That explains why in Portugal hearts is called "copas". Also in Portugal diamonds are called "gold". The design is the French one, but the names stayed the original ones.

All these designs have the same origin in tarot cards, they just evolved slightly differently.

Is there a particular reason that the French style is so much more abstract than the others?

Italy is not completely correct. The orange area uses the drawing of a club (as in a thick wodden stick), they're called "bastoni" ("sticks").

Actually in France we have both design!

The second one is rarer but you can see it on the "Tarot de Marseille"

It's a different set of cards, in this form there called "lames" (blades) or "arcanes" (arcana)

The set is divided in 4 colors also called family: "épée" (sword), "coupe" (cup, but think of it as the same type of cup as the saint grail), "bâton" (club) and "denier" (it's an old coin)

This compose the 52 "arcanes mineurs"

In addition there also 22 "arcanes majeurs" called "atouts"

And it is usually recognize because it's the base of the Tarot use for divination

But now it's generally used to play the eponymous game of "Tarot", a very good and very old game that me and my friend played a lot at uni

Curved. Swords.

Love that the Spanish are using Tarot suits for their standard playing cards.

Huh, pretty cool. I live in the blue area, and always thought others used the same type, because that's what I've seen in all the places I've been. Is there data available for the rest of the world?

Not only do we have our own deck, we also have our own games, ask about the mus or the subastado

Thank God, I always assumed Germany was the only country with a weird ass set of playing cards

Everything is fine except for the Itallians.

As a Bavarian I grew up with the German set but I myself prefer the french one. Don’t know why, I guess I just like it‘s style/asthetics more.

Didn‘t new about the Italian and Spanish ones until today.

Today i learned that what in romanian is called "black heart" is called spades or pikes in english