>
……the street signs in Mainz really are red and blue.
Nothing to do with a Napoleonic decree, though. (Well, it was April Fools Day yesterday…)
And the urban legend that it has something to do with the fire brigade is also way off the mark.
The truth:
Up until the middle of the 19th century, you could pretty much give your house whichever number you liked.
Dr. Josef Anschel was a logical person and the situation evidently offended his sense of aesthetics.
In 1849, he proposed that the streets running parallel to the Rhine should have blue street signs and be numbered sequentially starting from the south, with odds on one side of the road and evens on the other.
And that the roads leading to the Rhine be numbered started from the river and they should have red street signs.
The council turned him down.
4 years later, the police commissioner resurrected the idea and since 1853, it’s been dead easy to find your way around the city.
Honest.
Mainz Daily Photo 
>I agree with Meg; it took the organized German mind to see and respect the logic of the suggested grid and signs. Ah, but they saw the light—finally. Good shot!!
>The good doctor must have been the son of a suffering postal delivery person! Geez, I’m dim…. But it’s kind of hard to imagine that kind of logic didn’t exist in Germany since time immemorial…