What a cute little town and a pretty amazing castle! That faux siding really throws me though. I understand what they were going for and from a distance it doesn't look bad, but when you get close the two dimensional part of it makes it look a little funny.
You mean sgraffito, the fine art technique? Well, I am no artist myself, but as far as I am concerned, it's quite appreciated by pundits :)
Yeah, I guess that would be it :) It looks like an old Qbert board to me!
Well, the style is actually quite common here :) I am kinda used to it, many old buildings are decorated this way :) It's not been used in a mass scale since like two centuries ago, as it's very demanding, hence super-expensive.
I was going to say, the fact that they do it all by hand is pretty impressive. That kind of explains why it isn't as common now. Nobody wants to spend the time or money on something like that.
:)