Colourful islands and coastal cities

As a tourist, I was delighted to see very colourful houses in Mediterranean islands or coastal towns like Sidi Bou Said (Tunisian town), Santorini and Mykinos (Greek islands), Burano (Italian island), Perpignan (French town) and Alicante (Spanish town). In Perpignan houses are painted in bright oranges, yellows or pinks, and the shutters are painted in a colour different from that on the walls. In Cassis, a French town near Marseille, the back roads are lined with the brightly coloured homes of fishermen. In Mirepoix, a southern French town near Carcassonne, the brightly coloured houses have high windows, contrasting shutters and slightly sloping roofs.

Burano, an Italian island

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And it did not surprise me to read about equally colourful towns in hot, musical places like Cuba, Curacao, San Juan in Puerto Rico, the barrio viejo of Tucson USA and Zacatecas in Mexico. And thanks to Art Deco Buildings blog for recommending that I have a look at Bo Kaap, Cape Town in South Africa. called the Bo-Kaap area. In a predominantly Muslim section of the town, the houses might be small but they are painted in very bright colours!

My thinking, based on no historical reading whatsoever, went like this: Mediterranean and Caribbean towns are geographically isolated from the mainland and therefore do not have to behave "respectably". Furthermore they tend to be hot, relaxed places where people swim semi-naked, eat under palm trees and sway to tropical music.

Of course heat by itself is not enough of a defining factor. After all, I cannot imagine coloured houses, naked swimming or Caribbean music in very hot cities like Baghdad.

But some cool temperate or cold places were an absolute surprise eg St John Newfoundland in Canada, Honnisvag in Norway, Tobermory in Scotland, Llandeilo in Wales, Cork in Ireland, Bristol in England or St Peter Port in Guernsey.

Cork, Ireland

Thus we have a unpredictable assortment of colourfully painted towns that radically differ from each other on climate, religion and life style. In each island or town, I would like to know how the decision to paint the houses came about. Was there a long history of colourful homes in those particular places or did the decision come about suddenly? Did the directors of tourism services suggest that lively, colourful towns would attract outside visitors more, especially in colder or duller climates? Does the town council in these places have the right to approve the colours selected by individual householders?

St John's Newfoundland, Canada

And does the size of the town or the island make any difference to the decision-making? Tobermory on Mull only has a population of 500 people and although its association with the British Fisheries Society was once hugely successful locally, this Scottish town didn't have to consult many people before it made its decisions. The population of Burano might be 4,000 and Nuuk might have 14,000 citizens, but they are still very small. On the other hand St John's Newfoundland has almost 200,000 residents, so could not possibly paint every house and business brightly. What they have done, in this bigger city, is to restrict the bright colours to the Victorian and heritage buildings. This is very similar solution to the one chosen by San Francisco, an even larger city.

Tobermory on Mull, Scotland

Occasionally historians can get glimpses of decision making. Sometimes the decision was made without much planning. Colourful Cambridge Campaign suggested that Italian migrants, who settled in La Boca in Buenos Aires from 1880 onwards, could not afford paint for their houses. So they used the left over paint that was used to protect the ships in the dock. Ookpik found more historical thinking in the choice of colours in Nuuk, Greenland i.e that modern Nuuk citizens wanted to keep the traditional feel of the town’s original Dutch settlers.

Bo Kaap, Cape Town, Z.A.

Travelblog Jodhpur reported that most buildings in Jodhpur are painted medium blue which makes this Indian city a stunning sight. The blue painting was originally only used by the Brahmin caste but soon others joined in; the colour was said to deflect the heat and keep mosquitoes away.
                                                                    

Curacao, former Netherlands Antilles

I can imagine that far from continuing a long and much loved tradition from the past, some cities wanted a clean break from their past. Touropia reported that the new mayor of Tirana in Albania launched a campaign to add colour to the city that he felt had been dull under the communists. In 2000, apartment blocks and public buildings were painted in intense pinks, greens and blues.

Interestingly, I could only find one individual who was responsible for changing the colour preferences of an entire town. Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger’s own palace at Sidi Bou Said in northern Tunisia was completed straight after WW1. Not only did he love bright blue and white for his own architecture – he also asked the rest of the town to paint their homes similarly.

Nyhavn Copenhagen