Today I'm back with another post about interesting doors and windows I've been able to photograph the last couple of days. Every era and every region has its specific style and those nations that can preserve the past have a rich cultural offer.
Medieval cities are particularly interesting from this point of view, even though not everyone can see that. What is treasure and beautiful for me, may be old and outdated to others. Truth to be told, I'm looking at everything I'm going to upload here as an outsider and judging it from strictly photographic and style point of view. Those who live in such a house obviously are looking at doors and windows from a totally different point of view.
And there's the authorities in the middle. Most of these houses are considered historical monuments and therefore protected by law. Which means the owner of the building has the obligation to restore and preserve the building to its original state. This is a good step towards preserving the past, but can be extremely expensive. Imagine replacing the front door or the gate and instead of choosing something that is in vogue today, you have to do a special order and also look for specialists who can do it.
These window shutters look quite old and are part of the beauty this old house has to offer. Back in those days this shutter was a practical solution and possibly trendy as well. This type of window shutter is still very popular in the mountain regions but not in cities. I'd love to have a house in the Alps with this kind of shutters.
This is a totally different architectural style, built in the 20th century or the 19th, by Saxons. Unfortunately those huge trees are covering most of the building and made my job very difficult as finding a good angle is basically impossible.
The first owner of the house must have been a wealthy person as back in those days having a house of this size was not possible for everyone. The architectural design is impressive. Those windows are nicely decorated. Specific to Saxon buildings is the high ceiling, the cellar under the house and those high gates, usually with a smaller door incorporated into the the big door.
These gates served for handling carriages and chariots going in and out as that was the only way to travel and transport goods back in those days.
This is a good example. You can see the door incorporated in the gate. The downside of a bigger building is having multiple owners, which leads automatically to having different opinions when it comes to choices. For an outsider like me, seeing two shades of green on one building can be confusing. It doesn't look good, no matter how you look at it.
Last but not least, I'd like to show you this gate, which is most likely newer than the rest, replacing the old one. It's an odd one, especially the colors. I would have loved to see the old one, but I suppose there's no record of it anywhere.
A walk in such a street is like a walk back in time. The difference is that people back in those days did not take photos of these buildings, there was no traffic like today and only a handful could afford to have such a beating house.