Fascinating and photogenic, colorful cities often catch the eye not only of the thousands of tourists visiting every year but also of many architects around the world. From an aerial viewpoint - which happens to be how many visitors get their first glimpse of these cities from the window of an airplane - one can see the colorful picture created by the many different shades of roofs and rooftops.
There are many different reasons for this diversity of colors. Some cities use specific colors on roofing as a climate strategy, while others simply have a tradition of painting houses in a certain way. In any case, these colorful cities are unquestionably very visually appealing.
The ancient city of Naples, Italy, bears witness to its past through its buildings. This aerial image of an area of the historic center of Naples shows variations between the more vivid and the more faded colors of the roofs, revealing the different construction periods of the buildings.
The colorful island of Burano, also in Italy, is located about seven kilometers from Venice and attracts many tourists from all over the world every year. The origin of the multicolored houses is still undetermined, but some say that the fishermen when returning to their homes, couldn't recognize them due to the fog, so they started to paint them with vibrant colors to make them easier to identify.
The architecture of Las Palmas, one of the Canary Islands, is known for its colorful house facades and rooftops, the former most often pictured on the island's postcards. In addition to their visual appeal, the colors of the roof terraces also reduce solar heat on hot days, providing greater comfort in interior spaces.
A similar strategy is seen in Khlong Sam Wa, one of the 50 districts of Bangkok, Thailand, where the roof tiles are painted in light colors to reflect the sunlight and lower the houses' indoor temperatures. This district, established in 1997, has several housing developments that can be easily identified from an aerial perspective due to their distinctive colors.
From an aerial point of view, one can also notice the variety of roof colors of the houses in the Cite Djemaa district in Casablanca, Morocco. Despite what the name of the city suggests (White House, translated literally), the multitude of architectural styles found in the city allows for buildings with a great diversity of shades.
However, this colorful view of the cities from above is not always due to the architecture alone. Sometimes, the various colors of the roofs are combined with the natural hues of elements such as canals, rivers, and plants. One example is Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, where the red, white, and blue roofs surround and highlight the green of the patios and gardens inside the houses.
In Boynton Beach, USA, besides the green of the vegetation surrounding the houses in planned communities, aerial photography also allows us to recognize the dark blue of the bodies of water, a recurrent element in the urban planning of cities in Florida. The many different colors of roofs combined with these natural elements and the winding urban layout result in a remarkable aerial view.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on April 19, 2021.
