Thresholds, crossroads and gateways

I have always been fascinated by train stations and I travel by train whenever I can. The best stations capture that sense of "in between" that we can get - well, I do - from waiting rooms, antechambers, portals, crossroads, and going through gates. Obviously there is one very specific metaphor here...

"I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then - I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn't, luckily, have to bother about that." - Agatha Christie describing herself

Anterooms can have more positive meanings, and artists and designers have made the most of this, in particular Hector Guimard's Paris Métro entrances, like the one shown above. Guimard's designs were controversial, but 141 entrances were constructed between 1900 and 1912, of which 86 still exist. I also like the distinctive Métro signposts from the 1910's through the 1930's by Nord-Sud, Val d'Osne and Dervaux companies, like this one:

Then there are the many famous gates around the world, like Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, the Gate of Magnificence near Agra, Arco da Rua Augusta in Lisbon, Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, or the gates of Mordor, but they seem to be designed to project power and they don't interest me. The same with checkpoints and border crossings, including historical ones like Checkpoint Charlie. Wherever there is a projection of power, there are ghosts and a residue of unnecessary deaths.

And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in

That's Auden and Leonard Cohen respectively. They remind me of the sea gates at Dolmabahçe Palace, Istanbul which suggests stepping into a different world altogether, like a wardrobe or platform 9 3/4. These I like.

I am reminded of mirrors as gateways - Through the Looking-Glass (1871), for example - and of other poets...

Is this the visitor from the wrong side 
of the mirror? Or the shape 
that suddenly flitted past my window? 
Is it the new moon playing tricks, 
or is someone really standing there again 
between the stove and the cupboard?
- Anna Akhmatova

Airports though? I have never been in one I liked, other than a few tiny ones. Here's one I did like:

Thresholds and gateways in mythology were (are?) presided over by "liminal deities" - ancient gods or goddesses - and almost all of them had a role to play in protecting nature's magic. This is something we are losing on a planet with species extinction accelerating, disappearing private spaces and disappearing memories. Perhaps the greatest painter of such memories was Caspar David Friedrich (more here):

Mountain passes and river crossings? Charon and the River Styx, Thomas Cole, Washington Crossing the Delaware and many paintings of the American Old West. Romantic painters also specialized in this, for example Andreas Roller, German-born, but who spent most of his career in Russia:

Finally, although I'm not religious, it's only fair to acknowledge the impact of religious art. I rather like this, even if it's kitsch: At the Crossroads, by Carl Böker:

Also see:
Isaak Levitan here
The Rashōmon Gate here
Norse mythic gateways here and here
The Christian version here