RED TOWN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1938, Page 7

RED TOWN

CURIOSITY IN FRANCE. France, among its many curiosities, possesses a red town, of which every house is built in red stone and whose roadways are of red earth, with red pavements. Collanges-la-Rouge, in the departement of Correze, is the name of this strange town, well known to tourists who go many miles to see so curious a sight. Collanges is an ancient town, built of stone quarried in the neighbourhood rich in red stone. The town is not only red but is filled with picturesque ancient houses, for dwellings have existed on this spot since the days of the Romans. Its charm lies in its ancient mansions of the Renaissance period and somewhat earlier. It boasts a church of the eleventh century, a fine specimen of a fortified church, where the ornamented portals are replaced by a solidly built tower entrance, where the inhabitants in time of danger could find shelter. Collanges-la-Rouge is a dying town, inhabited only in part. Some of its ancient buildings have two or three rooms inhabited, while other are empty and stairways leading to them have fallen into decay. A true town of the Middle Ages, no street is straight, no house the same height, and every way one looks in this red town one sees curious pointed roofs, large houses with windows often recalling our Tudor windows, and fine old gardens. Trees and other vegetation in this town seem even greener than elsewhere because of the contrasting red stones of the buildings, and to walk along street after street of these houses and mansions of different tones of red is indeed a strange experience. The whole town has been proclaimed national property and not a stone of it may be touched. To see the sun go down over Collanges is a sight never to be forgotten.