House Garden 
TYROLESE ARCHITECTURE. 
IV. VILLAGES. 
T HE distribution of buildings throughout 
the Alpine countries is a phenomenon to 
American eyes, for mountainous tracts of 
our own land are usually devoid of human 
habitations, and the names of our ranges 
recall wastes of solitary wilderness. But 
Alpine solitudes 
are more difficult 
to find, are less 
apparent in real¬ 
ity, than they are 
in the mind’s-eye 
when turning the 
pages of written 
poetry. Villages, 
cottages and 
herdsmen’s huts 
appear in the most 
unexpected places 
where the diffi¬ 
culties of build¬ 
ing, the exposure 
to the elements 
and the incon¬ 
veniences of liv¬ 
ing in uneasy 
perches would 
have discouraged 
any but a people 
bred among the 
mountains, where 
distances are 
measured by 
hours of walking 
and where hard, 
knotted limbs are 
accustomed t o 
treading the earth 
aslant. 
In the Tyrol, configuration of the ground 
seems to have been no obstacle to the 
location of single buildings, or of villages. 
Inaccessible promontories were naturally 
selected for the strongholds of baronial 
times, but humbler dwellings cling to the 
precipitous mountain faces, and villages have 
grown upon a base of forty degrees or in the 
depths of a defile, where landslides and 
floods are forever imminent. Those natural 
catastrophes, which have caused many an 
iron cross to rise in the village churchyards, 
have been forgotten when habitations were 
to be reared. A mysterious improvidence, 
this seems at first; but it must be remem¬ 
bered that sites which promise an ideal of 
comfort are rare in the Tyrol, and those 
which escape the flood, face the hail and the 
hurricane of a higher and colder strata of 
air and are buried from November until 
May under over¬ 
whelming snow. 
Some light is shed 
on this aimless 
and picturesque 
scattering of 
buildings among 
the mountains 
by recalling the 
position of the 
feudal buildings 
in their former 
surroundings. 
The barons of 
the Middle Ages 
were monarchs of 
their val leys. 
They dominated 
the country-side, 
and took upon 
themselves not 
only the care of 
the roads and the 
policing of their 
several districts, 
but they gave free 
hospitality to the 
traveler, provided 
him with shelter 
for the night and 
horses for his next 
day’s journey. 
H ere, as in many 
other Teutonic countries in former times, the 
traveler could not be refused hospitality ; 
and “ the lord’s shelter ” (in old Teutonic, 
here-berga ) was the safety of wayfarers, and is 
still traceable in the modern French auberge 
and the Italian albergo. The remoteness of 
the castle from the thoroughfare along the 
main valley made it necessary for the lords 
to entertain their guests at an inn upon the 
highroad near the base of the hills. This 
inn was the nucleus of the village. Houses 
THE CHURCH OF TELFS 
21 5 
