BRIGHT COLORS FROM DOMINICA

What I particularly like about Dominica are colors. This land is part of the Windward islands in the Lesser Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean Sea (see map).
 

Its capital, Roseau, is a beautiful concentration of colored houses. Even foreign consulates, like the Belgian one showed in this picture, are part of this colorful architecture.  

 
The urban structure of the central Roseau is based on an irregular grid system of small proportions, making it almost illegible. 

As I was wandering throughout its streets, I was surprised how easy it was getting lost or, at least, how difficult was to find a building or a store that I had just seen a few minutes before, even though the grid area is not extensive (Dominica’s population is less than 72.500, and Roseau has a population of 16.600). I often found myself asking people for a specific restaurant or store, only to discover next that I had been directed to a similar but different place. This is not so bad. It makes exploring Roseau a permanent exciting discovery.
 
Back to the topic of colors, there are several fine examples of West Indian architecture in Roseau, the most outstanding being the French colonial style and the vernacular form. Look at these pictures. I composed them to stress the beautiful contrast of bright colors, between walls and windows and among different houses.

But there is more. People too, often dressed in colored clothes, and melt finely with the historic stone-and-wood buildings, creating a peculiar atmosphere that it’s not simply tropical, but really Caribbean. You can see it by yourselves in the next three images.

 

One more thing. My last picture is about a decayed, but still photogenic, wood house. Even if colors in this case are almost disappeared, a close look can see that, in their heyday, the color was present in this construction too.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures and my short description of Roseau, Dominica island’s capital. See you at the next post.

© riccardo forte / All my pictures are digitally watermarked by Digimarc® Guardian