Photo of the day: Terra cotta panorama.

“As they went up between the houses that were dark and grisly under the blank, cold sky, it is amazing how these women of vermilion and rose-pink seemed to melt into an almost impossible blare of colour. What a risky blend of colours!”

— D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia

Some places have a way of impressing a particular color upon our minds, so that when we leave, what remains of the memories of our time there is forever cast in a certain hue, entire scenes shaded as if by a camera filter.

When I think of French Polynesia, I think of a rich blue, the depths of its atolls the shade of a peacock’s tail. Thailand is gold, with its temples and buddhas and long rows of ancient gilded statues. And after a weekend in northwest Sardinia, I’m left seeing the world through terra cotta-colored glasses.

I’d noticed the tiled roofs immediately from the terrace of our hotel in Alghero, but it wasn’t until a sleepy little town called Bosa that I was truly struck by how prominent the color was. There, from the slopes of a centuries-old castle, the town of 8,000 spread out in front of us, each roof another wave in a sea of deep clay red.

“If I lived in Bosa,” my flatmate and travel companion Claire remarked, “I’d be a roofer. I’d be the richest man in town.”