Picturesque cottages, neat low fences, low-key street lamps in the shape of balls, cropped trees with crowns, a variety of colors, narrow cobblestone streets and sidewalks - three meters wide, which is difficult to pass one another oncoming car, causing many of them one-way traffic. All well maintained - all in a good tale.
The difference alpine villages in neighboring countries is still present. In France, the facades are painted brighter and richer decoration - Christmas wreaths and decorations are replaced by summer garlands and flower vases. Clipped hedges, shaped crown tui and eloquently called "rock gardens" (rock gardens, rockeries) with a seasonal blooming rhododendrons and other shrubs complete the picture, merging man-made environment with the miraculous environment. Bring a special charm to the mountain streams, karst, and replenished by melt water - their tumultuous murmuring streams of crystal water enliven the landscape, making it even more fabulous.
Alpine huts are the traditional houses - chalets built of local natural materials, stone and wood, as a whitewash for the plastered walls using lime. Everything that grows and lies and get baking - limestone dolomite, pine and hardwood wax-end bass - all native, and his own. High ground floor is always erected of stone, not only to reliably protect the house from the cold, wet, snow, but also to build the foundations and walls of the basement at any hillside. In addition, this center of gravity of the structure - and it would be strange to assume a wooden bottom and top of the stone.
All the upper floors of the classic chalet (usually the first and attic) were collected from solid timber softwood (pine and larch). A tree over time by wind, snow, rain, sun and cold, oxidized, morilos, darkened, became tarred. Facades facing the weather, or the shingles were trimmed with wood chips, so they did not look very presentable. It is also very cost-conscious and traditional - who's looking at them! But the east, facing the sun facade, is the most beautiful and looks over the valley and the rising sun. Its walls are plastered, painted white with lime, decorated with bright murals, decorated ledges, balconies and carved. The motives of painting, as a rule, are a religious plot structure: the Virgin Mary, Pentecost, Christmas scene with a barn and sheep, the worship of the Magi, and the saints, keepers of the hearth: Florian, Leonard, George, Sebastian and Christoph giant. Often the motto inscribed on the facade, witty sayings like: "Building a house could be a priceless pleasure, if it were not so wasteful." This is the front facade, full of comeliness and decorum.
Such is the simple and unpretentious chalet architecture: a massive and substantial stone plinth, whitewashed with lime first floor, log or lumber over, loft with a simple gable roof and a sloping, deep nahlobuchennoy home and prominent edges harboring the wall from the rain, made of wooden balconies, the darkened ceiling beam inside and a warm, enveloping comfort of the interior. All of this chalet - and nothing more.
