LIVING IN CAVES.

LIVING IN CAVES. Kids, you should know (and I think you do) that as late as the 1970″s your mother had a great uncle who was living a house carved out of rock in Agri in Calabria. The Smithsonian article on the Via Aurelia linked to this article about troglodytes—people who live in dwellings carved out of rock. Often, the rock is tufa, which is worked more easily than other stone. The article points out that many of the dwellings are in cavities left after stone was removed to build chateaux. There were entire villages underground. There are hundreds of miles of caves just in the area near Saumur. The slide show with the article seems to feature high-end rock dwellings. In the Dordogne we visited a reconstruction of an apartment that was carved in rock. It seemed dank rather than cozy. The article describes a magical visit to one of the cave dwellings. But then there is this sentence: “‘Everyone in the area is always covered with tuffeau,’ Annette laughs, as she brushes some of the white dust from her living-room wall off my jacket.”