Troglodyte Dwellings

Yesterday afternoon, I was out doing what I love doing better than most anything, which is to say, just out poking around, when to my astonishment, we stumbled on a deep and large hole in the ground in the middle of a small village near where we live. There had clearly been stone quarrying activity there long ago, and people had at some point created dwellings in the old quarried out galleries. This is the front facade of a couple of such troglodyte dwellings, which had been abandoned long ago. There were some old newspapers laying around from 1979. And broken bits of furniture, a particulary lovely rusted out old cast iron stove with white porcelain, an ancient bedframe. Who lived here ? Why did they give it up to decay, despair, abandon ? ? ?

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This flight of ancient stone stairs was in the vicinity, leading nowhere in particular these days. . .

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I know this isn't the prettiest photo I ever took, but then life is not always all that pretty either. My wife immediately exclaimed, "wow, they even left the chamber pot". . .
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