By: Martina Celegato
Submitted: 2010-09-03 07:48:16 | Word Count: 551
Seychelles, an archipelago of the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar, were uninhabited until few centuries ago. Vasco de Gama was the first European person to discover these islands, in 1502, and then Great Britain and France contended with each other for their possession. Although it was France to lay claim to the possession of the islands first (in 1756 French captain Nicolas Morphy laid a stone of possession there, and the name of the archipelago comes from Jean Moreau de Séchelles, Louis XV’s Minister of Finance), it was great Britain that took the sovereignty of Seychelles in 1810, with the Treaty of Mauritius, a sovereignty which was then formalised in 1814 with the Treaty of Paris, and nowadays Seychelles are part of the Commonwealth. Seychelles still show some traces of their colonial past, traces that are evident in the mixture of cultures and traditions and in architecture.
The houses of Seychelles have some features which are typical of colonial architecture and which have not been erased by time. This means that also the tourists and visitors of the islands, who choose these dreamy places to spend their holidays in a real earthly paradise, surrounded by luxuriant nature and matchless colours, can learn more about the peculiarities of colonial architecture walking down the streets of the capital, Victoria, or choosing to stay in a villa having the typical characteristics of the colonial style.
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The colonial past of Seychelles is visible, for example, in the imposing entrances of some owner’s houses, which tell us that in that period landowners were in competition with each other to show their superiority. But there are many other architectural features which remind us of colonial style. This type of architecture, for example, was characterised by some elements which were conceived to improve the wellbeing of the people who lived in those buildings, and to face some climatic factors. This is why roofs (in the beginning they were made of palm leaves, which were then replaced by iron plates) are sloping to make water slide down more easily in case of heavy rain, while against hot many other devices were used. The veranda, for example, is one of the most important parts of this kind of houses: this is the ideal place to receive hosts or simply to relax away from the sun, and it is no coincidence that even the most recent buildings, which were built to meet the great demand of tourists who want to spend a holiday in an apartment in Seychelles, are almost always equipped with a veranda.
Of course with the passing of time some peculiarities of the houses and buildings of Seychelles have changed, although other ones have remained unchanged. Besides roofs, which in the beginning were made of palm leaves, as said above, also other features of the houses have undergone evolutions. For walls and floors, which in the past were made of wood, cement is now used, and the kitchen, which used to be outside to prevent the smell of spicy food from pervading the other rooms, in the most recent buildings, especially in the case of holiday houses, is part of the building.
