After a bit less than five years, today I got a thick file of documents and plans pertaining to the rebuilding of my house in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were collecting dust with my builder, who got them from my lawyer in 2002. And the lawyer got them from the lawyer of the people who sold me the house the very same year. The yellowing pile is pretty boring, but it contains two photographs of the house as it was in the late 1940s, decades before it turned to ruin. Happily, they are sharp enough. Sadly, neither of them bears any date. The front of the house I have already seen from a photograph taken from a slightly different vantage point down Borgo. But the back of the house is quite stunning. I have seen it never before. Or even imagined it. Where my terrace stands now, there towered a huge pile of five stories. I knew there was a house back there, but I had no idea how tall it was. And it was humongous. Gigantic. The wall under my terrace, where the cellar used to be, is still visible, but the four stories that rose above it are gone for good. The nine windows in the photograph are the most amazing, though. Facing the Mirna valley, a breathtaking sight, they were of the smallest kind. Mere holes in the wall, and each of them different in shape, they were not meant for enjoyment. Far from it. They were there for a dash of ventilation and a spot of light. Nothing more. The sight be damned. Only a few centuries ago, long before the view was invented. Or even dreamt of by the innocent inhabitants of Motovun.

Addendum (June 12, 2016)

In a traditional Istrian house, four stone joists of equal thickness frame each window. Flat, rather smooth, and protruding slightly from the façade, the stone is always left exposed. Carved with considerably greater care than stones forming walls, which were covered with mortar and then painted, they were quite precious in the past. That is, they took a lot of time to make. When old buildings were pulled down, the window joists were carefully removed and put aside for later use. All four joists framing a window were saved together. When a new building was being put up, the saved window joists were used. More often than not, their size and shape did not matter very much, if at all. What mattered was that the whole window frame was in good shape. This is why many an old building in these parts has a wide variety of windows to this day. This is what must have happened with the nine windows on the erstwhile façade above the terrace of my house. The window joists must have come from several different buildings that were pulled down earlier. Again, all the windows provided was a dash of ventilation and a spot of light. The way they looked from the garden below or anywhere else was utterly irrelevant. Which is just to my exacting taste, it goes without saying. Stunning, indeed.