The striped houses
Costa Nova
A beach village near Aveiro whose wooden houses are painted in bold vertical stripes on white.
Why Costa Nova is candy-stripe red
Costa Nova is a strip of beach between the Atlantic and the Aveiro lagoon in Portugal. Its seafront is lined with palheiros, wooden houses painted in broad stripes of red, blue, green or yellow alternating with white. They began in the 19th century as plain plank sheds where fishermen kept nets and gear. When sea bathing became popular, families started to rent and then convert them into summer homes, and the stripes became a point of pride. The paint also protects the wood from salt and wind. Most stripes run vertically; a few are horizontal. Many houses have since been rebuilt in brick and painted to match. Fishing boats still land on the beach.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Costa Nova
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Gafanha da Encarnação" on Wikipedia. If you know Costa Nova and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
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🇵🇹 Blue-and-white tiled churchesPortoGranite churches and a railway station clad in huge blue-and-white tile pictures, above a riverside of coloured houses.
🇵🇹 Painted boats on the canalsAveiroA lagoon town of canals, where high-prowed boats carry bright hand-painted panels, and salt is piled in white heaps.
🇮🇳 The open-air gallery of RajasthanShekhawatiMerchant mansions in the towns of north Rajasthan are covered inside and out with painted murals.
🇮🇳 Land of mirror work and white desertKutchEmbroidery, tie-dye and block print in deep red and indigo, set against the white salt of the Rann.
🇮🇳 The silk cityKanchipuramA temple town in Tamil Nadu whose heavy silk saris pair strong body colours with contrasting gold borders.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Shekhawati In: Digrajsingh, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Kutch In: Zeel Satyendra Modi, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Kanchipuram In: Ssriram mt, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Lisbon Pt: Lacobrigo, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Porto Pt: Rititaneves, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Aveiro Pt: Joaomartinho63, CC BY-SA 3.0, source