…The girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window,

and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.

These are borderlands; lands shaped by a mixture of styles, borrowed languages and predominant cultures; they are lands with very labile cultural boundaries, common tastes and a shared conception of beauty. Perhaps for this reason, several villages between France and Switzerland I have visited so far, some very similar to each other, others with a very strong personality, show a nearly maniacal care of small details, with an unmistakable French flavor as a common denominator.

Delicious little doors of wood, hanging in the air or with lilliputian size, open a gap in walls of stone; windows with stained shutters unfold to the world and flowers displayed over the sill; wrought iron signs on top of boutiques and craft shops, so beautiful that they seem small ancient works of art; tin cats and wooden birds find a shelter among the dozens of pots piled in an apparently random order; the houses’ plaster in pastel shades that remind us we live in a colorful world.

And if the whole beauty of these villages is a very good reason for wanting to go back several times, their details, I am sure, will make you fall in love.

..windows with stained shutters unfold to the world..

.. flowers displayed over the sill..

 ..delicious little doors of wood, hanging in the air or with lilliputian size..

..wrought iron signs seem small ancient works of art..

..tin cats and wooden birds find a shelter among the dozens of piled pots..

..the houses’ plaster in pastel shades that remind us we live in a colorful world..