The Dovecotes of Tinos (English language edition): Strolling through the craft of stonemasonry in 1955

From the Introduction: In Tinos, dovecotes can be seen everywhere. The most beautiful can be found isolated in gardens, near a village or a little further away or near a spring that irrigates a garden. Others, in the middle of a field, amidst the fig and olive groves, are often associated with a wine-press or a threshing floor for wheat. [ . . .] Usually however, the dovecote is far from the village and almost always includes a room on the ground floor where the owner can store his tools and the harvest, and possibly spend the night. [. . .] the dovecotes of Tinos are undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most numerous in the Cyclades.

n 1955, a young student of the Geneva School of Architecture, Manuel Baud-Bovy, visited Tinos (an island in the Greek Cyclades archipelago) for the first time, staying in a cottage on the sandy beach of Kiona. While exploring the island, Manuel came across some unusual buildings: dovecotes, scattered right across the island.

Manuel Baud-Bovy, deeply impressed, decided to compile a systematic list of the dovecotes. He walked all over the island, sometimes sleeping in a village, sometimes under the stars or on a threshing floor, in a chapel, or even in an abandoned dovecote. He discovered about eight hundred of them, which he recorded in four large albums with detailed plans, theories and thoughts, which he submitted to the Geneva School of Architecture for his doctoral dissertation.

After 60 and more years, a selection of this rare and valuable material becomes a book, enriched with introductory texts and many photographic documents that capture the dovecotes as they were preserved in 1955.

English language edition