a village between the sky and stones

Village des Bories is an open-air museum of 20 or so dry stone huts located 1.5 km west of the Provençal village of Gordes,France.

Bories, also referred to locally as Gallic huts, are built from dry stone walls, without the use of mortar, based on the architectural principle of the corbelled vault. The huts were built using locally extracted, 10 to 15 cm-thick, limestone slabs, going by the name of “lauses” or “clapes, a practice that continued up until the last century. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the increase in population forced farmers to grow crops on new land.

The exact date of construction is unknown, but the huts have been occupied since at least the 18th century:Some say the huts were built in the 7th century after the fall of Apta Julia, while others believe they were built after the 15th century. Ceramic remains found in the village indicate that the huts were occupied from the 18th to the 19th century. It was restored between 1969 and 1976, and stands today as it did when the last inhabitants abandoned it approximately 150 years ago. 

Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building metho by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind the together. A certain amount of binding is obtained through the use of carefully selected interlocking stone