Bories

Themes > History

Nearby:  | Apt | Bonnieux | Caussols Plateau | Forcalquier | Gordes | Lacoste | Luberon Mountains, Park | Ménerbes | Murs | Seillans | Viens | Villes-sur-Auzon |

Below: | Where to Find Bories | Books |

A Borie is a dry-stone hut, roughly like an igloo made of stones. The one in our photo is a couple of km southwest of Forcalquier, beside the D950 road.

Dry-stone construction, which has been around since the dawn of time, can be seen in the hills throughout the Beyond region.

In the southeast of France, in what is now the Alpes Maritimes, bories date back to the Ligurians, roughly 600 BC up to Roman times. We have seen, and photographed, scores of these ancient bories in the Alpes Maritimes.

These ancient bories are often near, and sometimes integrated with, Ligurian oppidum and ancient bergeries. Being of universal practicality, these ancient bories have been used well into modern times, or more modern but identical versions built when needed. We don't think they're often "restored", since they tend to last pretty much forever, excepting when vandilized for their stone, or for more mundane reasons.

The Luberon region, is famous for it's interesting bories, which pretty much date back to the 13th century. Around the 18th and early 19th centuries, farmers and shepherds built everything from small stone huts (bories) to complete small farm complexes with this method.

Although the bories were very useful, the reason for building them was very basic: to clear the stones from the fields. If the stones hadn't been in the way, most of the bories probably wouldn't have been built. But there were a lot of stones to clear, and rather than just make an enormous pile, something useful was created. M. Pierre Martel built a small borie in 1964 the way his grandfather had done. When he finished, he figured that he had used up to 300,000 stones, or about 180 tons. ["Bories", by the Parc Naturel Régional du Luberon; Edisud]

The land is often barren of good timber and the stone is plentiful. These are labor-intensive constructions, built in a time when schedules were more relaxed. The artistry includes very careful selection of stones of varying thickness and then assembling them into tight, compact walls with neatly straight edges. The fact that many of these bories have lasted centuries, while the cement has crumbled on more modern buildings, shows the benefit of simple ideas and good workmanship. Oh, yes. The bories can be ancient, but the name is late 19th century.
In the rocky land of the bories, you'll often find thick stone walls that have no apparent purpose. We've seen areas where the walls are only a few meters apart, sometimes running to 4 to 5 meters wide and only 10 or 20 meters long.

The areas of the Alpes Maritimes that have many bories, are the same areas with many Ligurian oppidum.

Where to Find Bories

In Beyond, the area around Forcalquier and the Lure mountains is well known for bories, and there are many in the Luberon and the area around Apt and Bonnieux. In the Alpes-Maritimes, shepherds still use them in the hills above Vence and Grasse, and they sit beside the modern telescopes of the CERGA observatory on the plateau of Calern. Some places where you can see the bories of Beyond are listed at the top of this page.

Dry-stone huts, whatever they are called, can be found all over the world. In the Borie Village at Gordes, there are photographs of "bories" from Beaujolais in France, Corsica, Crete, Death Valley in California, Italy, Mexico, Peru, the Sinai dessert, Switzerland, Turkey and what used to be Yugoslovia.

A Beyond reader, who's a student of archaeology from the University of Malta, told us the Maltese variety are called "giren".

Books

An excellent book (in French) about the Provence bories, with photos, maps and architectural drawings is:

Bories

Parc Natural Régional du Luberon

Edisud (publisher)

ISBN 2-85744-720-5