Gable stone

Gable stones (Dutch: gevelstenen) are carved and often colourfully painted stone tablets, which are set into the walls of buildings, usually at about 4 metres from the ground. They serve both to identify and embellish the building. They are also called "stone tablets" by the Rijksmuseum, which sometimes appends "from a facade". A "wall stone" is another suggested translation from the Dutch term.^[1]

The content of gable stones may explain something about the house's owner and are a feature of the urban fabric of Amsterdam. Some 2,500 of these stones can still be found in the Netherlands, of which around 850 are in Amsterdam and 250 in Maastricht, while others are also found in cities such as Brussels, Liège, Lille, Oslo, Bergen, Munich, Copenhagen, Bucharest, Zürich, Stockholm and Warsaw.^{[citation needed]}