IT IS no surprise that York, being a beautiful and historic city, has featured in lots of picture postcards.

It's a tradition that dates back well over a century. Some of the older postcards give an interesting glimpse of which parts of our city our ancestors thought worth photographing. The Minster, Shambles and the city walls, of course. But also Holgate, Lendal Bridge - and Coney Street.

York Explore has quite a collection of postcards of York in its archive. Our photos today come from Explore - you can see others at images.exploreyork.org.uk/default.aspx.

Among the chocolate-boxy postcards are also some that are more poignant - postcard tributes to York's fallen heroes of the 'Great War' of 1914 to 1918 - and even some postcards sent by York men servicing overseas back to the Lord Mayor of York in January 1915 to thank him for his gift of Christmas chocolate.

Enjoy...