There is a town I know which is like no other. I have been there twice, the second time surprised, not knowing I would have the opportunity to return. I remember it as red, but a deep red ochre, like the colour of certain earth. In truth, still not that, which would have been close to the colour of blood, but more nearly a mellow, warm reddish-pink. Hills surrounded the town, but not English hills – hot, dry, with outcrops of rock, and the sparse, bleached vegetation of such climates. The town and its landscape did not feel deprived of life-giving rain, rather belonging in the immemorial tradition of southern places under deep blue skies.

The houses were low, compact, as if growing out of the earth and not wishing to depart excessively from it. There was no impression of squatness, as the rows of buildings formed successive tiers, rising up the hillside when seen from below. That was part of the town’s magic – having to climb through it without knowing what I would find at the top. In fact there was a square, or as the French say in language less angular, a place. The importance of this whole town for me is not mainly in its beauty, the harmony of its buildings, the human scale, the absence of every hint of technology or gismo, but in the feeling it evoked in me. Here, as in no other place that I have known, I felt myself at home.

But I have been there only in dreaming.