Portugal, Schist Villages

The Schist Villages consist of 24 villages spread over in the Central Region of Portugal in an area of immense beauty and offers endless possibilities for recreation. The houses are mixed up in the landscape dark-colored shale. Some are abandoned, others should be recovered as, where traditions and materials were kept. These buildings are rough but beautiful at the same time before their architectural simplicity, where the shale is invariably used in walls and slate roofs. Generally buildings are accompanying the slope of the land and as such, have two floors. The store, on ground floor was meant for animals and housed upstairs to the owners. The little doors and tiny windows helped in the task because of the limited size of these openings let heat escape to guess the animals. How man and nature were one, some thick walls can hide inside a rock, which significantly reduces the usable area. Because they are all built very close together, the houses choked the streets, making them so narrow that not allowed for the passage of a bullock cart. Moreover, it is estimated that some of these paths have no more than a meter wide, forcing everything to be transported on their backs. The clay that served as the insulator and the stones with which to do the walls.