Breton Architecture

 

I am a sucker for stone buildings---real ones that use stone as a structural element, not just something clad in stone facing.  Perhaps it is their seeming permanence and solidity.  Perhaps it is the subtle differences in color and texture that they often exhibit.  Or maybe it is just because, excepting my time in Paris and one year in New Jersey, I have never lived someplace with abundant stone architecture, so it seems novel and interesting to me.  (In Indianapolis, brick, stucco, and clapboard were all fairly common as residential building materials.  In Boston, it's almost always timber construction with clapboard.)

So one of my favorite parts of last weekend in Brittany was admiring the architecture.  City houses, farm houses, churches, commercial buildings, barns, factories---almost all of them were built with local stone.  Above is a detail from a house we passed in one of the coastal towns we walked through.  I love the mix of different sized- and colored-stones, likely from different eras, bolstered by gray granite block and brick around the openings and a substantial weathered wooden beam above the window adding structure.

Here are some other examples, including a former rectory, a church used by the Knights Templar, and a former pig stye.  I also threw in a porthole cover on the door of a lighthouse, which I loved.