Today I drove about 30 kilometers to yet another small town in the southern part of Istra, the peninsula on which I live.
Bale is an old town that was formed during the Middle Ages, on the remains of the Roman stronghold called Castrum Vallis which was built to protect the road that was leading from the city of Pula northwards, towards other provinces. Just like the city of Pula/Pola and quite a few other towns of the Istrian west coast, Bale is a bilingual place with approximately half of its population being of Italian nationality, so the name Valle is equally valid and still present on traffic signs, tourist brochures, in books, and in documents.
I didn't enter the town this time ...
... because my attention got caught by some abandoned. heavily ivy-covered old houses ...
... on the large meadows outside the compact center of Bale/Valle.
I don't know the exact history of these buildings, couldn't find anything on the Internet ...
... but it looks that they were rural homesteads once upon a time. The building in this photograph ...
... has no roof ...
... doors and windows are just quadrangular holes in the walls ...
... which makes it a great place to explore on a sunny afternoon like this ...
... if you don't mind the thorny shrubs that have filled the interior.
Small fragments of wall decorations are still visible in a couple of places.
It's nice to see a bit of blue among all those shades of brown and yellow.
Here you can still see the shape of the fireplace and chimney.
I spent almost an hour admiring the atmosphere encapsulated in this decaying interior.
Here you can take a look at the outside world, through one of the four doorways.
This is the smaller stone cube that you only partially saw in the previous photograph. It looks like a base of a well typical for this area.
Here you can take another look at the outdoor ivy. I like these minimalist compositions in which different textures or patterns are confronted, that's why I took this photograph.
Here you can see the same building from another angle, while a local tractor is passing by ...
... and, if I zoom in, you can see that the property is on sale, so if you need a place near this town and you have some money to spend ... you can buy it.
This magpie was observing the scenery from the top of the nearest tree.
The house in this photograph was practically impenetrable. It has a relatively solid roof under all that ivy and the old wooden door was locked ...
... but I was able to take a shot through the hole provided by the damaged wood of that door. An old-fashioned wagon was stored inside.
Here you can see the front of the building. I mean, you can't. This side of the house was swallowed by ivy. It looks more like a cube-shaped shrub created by a gardener, not like something made of stone.
A bit further, near the road and not far from the cemetery, there was this group of pines. The trees were very neatly arranged.
This is a wider view of the meadow and the town behind it. I noticed a glare on one of those distant houses.
When I zoomed in ...
... I saw that the shine was coming from CDs (or DVDs) that were twirling on the cold but gentle breeze.
I photographed also some neighboring houses, and then ...
... continued walking towards the town ...
... and soon reached this church on the outskirts of Bale.
Here you can take a look at the only broken window on that old building. The other windows were in good shape.
The church of St. Anthony the Abbot was built in the early 14th century.
This house was photographed a bit further up the road ...
... and to shoot this one, from the same spot, I had to use a bit of zoom.
Here you can take a look at the road that leads to the core of the town situated on the small hill. A tractor with the trailer was maneuvering in the middle of the street. This is the closest I came to the center of Bale. After taking this shot ...
... I continued exploring along the edge of town.
After many old stone walls that appeared in this post, here you can finally see ...
... a recent one. This is the back of the pretty large sports hall that was built in 2007. Some minutes ago, while searching through the Internet, I found out that this building got the first prize in the category of sports facilities at the first World Architecture Festival in Barcelona in 2008. Competitors for this prestigious award were buildings such as the Wembley Arena in London, the Watercube Olympic Swimming Pool, and the Beijing Tennis Center. The sports hall in Bale won as a great example of the integration of contemporary architecture into the traditional environment.
The alignment of the goal, the sports hall, and the old church tower looked pretty cool, especially in a vertical composition.
Here you can take a look at some of the neighboring houses.
On the way back to the car I took another shot of the old homestead from the beginning of the post but from a distance this time. Instead of the blue sky, from this angle, the background is the hill across the road, so the photograph, while still being very similar, has a considerably different feel to it.
When I reached more or less the center of the large open field covered with short grass ...
... I pointed the camera towards the town on the hill ...
... and collected a couple of nice fragments of architecture.
Ten minutes later, I was driving home.
AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.
POST SCRIPTUM: In this photograph taken by a friend who was there with me, you can take a look behind the scene. I'm photographing the green interior of the old, abandoned homestead.