The facades are decorated using a special engraving technique known as ‘sgraffito’. Two or three coats of whitewash are overlaid onto grey plaster. Then, while this white layer is still moist, the engraver cuts motifs into it using a wooden stylus. Door archways, window recesses, gables and corners are the main areas decorated in this way, although whole areas of a building’s facade are also sometimes covered in sgraffiti. The patterns are mostly abstract, for example bands of triangles or circular decorations. This is a result of the later cladding of poorer wooden houses with stone as their inhabitants’ social status improved.