Village Rooftops

The room I stand in is bare, the cold floor made of a composite stone and concrete. The walls are cream colored and a very dim light shines, just barely, from the hallway behind me.
There is an open window in front of me, my hands are touching the cool white painted wooden sill. The single glass pane of the window is attached to the house at one of the vertical edges, opening to the outside like a fragile door. Outside the sky is mostly dark but for the touch of cobalt blue on the horizon, that thin line which shatters the darkness. The beaming moon above is enough to light the night and I can see the thick cluster of old houses with terracotta rooftops that are clustered over the rolling valley. There are a few birds in the air, already chirping before daybreak.

The vision out the window is one snapped up by every tourist that comes to this town.  3, 4, or 5 story houses all squeezed in together, the terracotta rooftop tiles looking like an undulating ocean over the wavy hillsides.
The walls of the buildings below me are old, some have bits of grass and weeds growing from the cracks in their sides and small clumps of dirt that have settled in the rooftop gutters have sprouted little tufts of greenery. 
On the very edge of the massive grouping is a more imposing church, its bright white-washed walls stand in stark contrast to the yellows, pale browns and beige of the terracotta houses, which in spite of their age still stand strong, proudly serving the life which carries on within them.

Chords of laundry lines connect neighbor to neighbor. They sit now empty, vibrating softly in the early morning air.
Planter boxes full of blooming red flowers hang off many narrow balconies or windowsills, there are dozens of satellite dishes protruding from rooftops or attached to wrought iron railings by the windows.
The houses are so close together I cannot see any roads or alleyways on the streets below, just visible are the chimneys and rooftops and the highest few floors of the buildings with their ample but small windows.
The structures are anything but uniform, though they roughly share the same dimensions, each has its own aesthetic, its own simple uniqueness which differentiates it from the ones beside it.  Their only common trait is the warm-hued terracotta roof, the sense of an ancient, but living structure.

Steeple

The sun reached its peak hours before and the light that now spills over the city is gold and fleeting. The walls of the many downtown buildings glow in a muted shade of orange and the sky above has turned a shade of pale blue that only holds the promise of darkness to come. There are no clouds, just endless pale blue. The street is wide and made of multiple lanes of traffic going in both directions. The city is a mixture of ancient and new, old edifices and architecture combined with new street lamps and signs. The street itself is covered with a fresh black layer of asphalt, but the sidewalks on the side are old cobblestone, worn to a shiny finish from years of use. Modern buses wait patiently in traffic beside buildings hundreds of years old. The street is exact and completely straight, breaking from its course only when it meets perpendicularly with another wide road at an intersection. Each lane is full of cars. They wait bumper to bumper, occasionally letting out a desperate honk that does nothing to move the cars ahead of them along. Dark exhaust streams from the back of the city buses. They wait as still as the cars and nearly hidden inside them are scores of passengers that stare out from the tinted windows with a mixture of helplessness and resigned desperation, unable to do anything to change their fate. An occasional motorcycle weaves its way through the congestion, finding the small pockets of space within the mess of metal and exhaust and beeping exasperation of horns. It is not just crowded streets, the sidewalks on either side of the traffic are full of pedestrians. Many of them are tourists, clinging to their maps and cameras and staring open-mouthed at the architecture. There are large baroque buildings that take up entire blocks and between them are grand cathedrals on every other corner. The tourists walk in small groups, adorned with hats and water bottles. Locals weave through them like motorcycles, finding the spaces between the gawking groups of picture-happy tourists. One of the oldest buildings in the downtown area is an old church with a long, narrow steeple made of metal. The building itself is constructed from bricks and rises five stories high. On the body of the building, but close to the steeple, are open square windows. Inside the windows, within the church, are the silhouettes of old people. The church building sways softly in the wind, moving slightly to the right and left, then forwards and backwards.

Gilded Building

A dark narrow street opens and expands into a large open air plaza. The large square space is covered in smooth pale bricks that approximate the colors of earth and clay and dried grass. The differently hued bricks trade places with each other and create a speckled palette for the eye. There are dozens of tourists and gray pigeons that mingle in the plaza, all of them walking slowly, gazing at the ground, at the buildings, taking in the bright sunny day. In the center of the plaza is a short waterless round fountain that is nearly invisible with the throngs of people surrounding it. Men in shorts and T-shirts have their cameras in front of their eyes, attempting to capture the architecture around them.
To the left of the entrance and on the right side of the plaza is a simple one-story building which has an open, dark hallway cut through the middle of it. It houses the maintenance supply room and a small gift shop. There is an air of stillness and mystery that surrounds the darkened hallway. There is no one moving through it, either into or out of the square. Directly in front of the entrance are two tall rectangular buildings, each covered in white stucco. To the left of the entranceway is a grand and imposing building covered in smooth white stucco. Its bottom resembles a rectangle and in the center is a large arched doorway made of planked wood. Many thin plate-glass windows line the front face of the building, each one is outlined in dark blue trim. The center of the roof is domed and covered in gild. In each of the four corners there are clusters of squat gilded towers of varying heights. The dome and towers gleam in the bright sunlight.
Inside, the domed building is crowded with row after row of long wooden bench tables and back-less wooden benches acting as seats. Upon all the tables are place-settings of tan porcelain and white linen napkins and crystal goblets. The seats are occupied by men and women who sit shoulder to shoulder. The women are in matching maroon dresses that have low horizontal necklines and reveal plump bosoms and lacy camisoles tucked beneath the maroon satin. The bust-lines are tight and synch at the waist, but the skirts are made full with white petticoats. Each woman has her hair held back in a woven hairnet that has pearls embedded in each crossing thread. The men’s suits are made from the same maroon satin. There are matching trousers and blazers and white shirts with ruffles that protrude from the chest and rise to the collar. On their heads are brown brimmed hats adorned with red feathers on the right side.
Each man and woman practices lifting their spoons in perfect unison. The lifting of their hands, the way each expertly holds their spoon, reveals the insignia tattooed on the small piece of skin between their thumbs and index fingers. There is a maestro at the front of the room, a thin woman who has the posture, body, and dress of a man. She holds a thin metal rod to communicate with the group in unison.