Hi there. I currently live in a 12th century palace. Well, actually, I live in what used to be the stable of the palace. The rest of the palace has become a hotel and some rooms have been sold to different people. Originally, the palace used to be inhabited by a family called Malvasia. This family had a somewhat bizarre tradition. Every year, after the grape harvest, they used to pour wine from one of their balconies. The wine was poured from a statue that resembles the head of a faun. The common people of the city used to gather beneath the balcony to drink the wine directly from the faun's statue. From the air, that is. I am sure that at the time it must have been a very happy event, but nowadays it sounds as a rather degrading thing to do. To drink wine from a statue just because some rich family is pouring it for free, I mean. Well, in those days people had different moral values. For example, in front of my stable, which is quite cozy, by the way, there used to be the entrance to the old Jewish gettho. During the middle ages the Jews were forced to live in a small area consisting of only two or three streets (three or four hundred meters in total). The area was closed during the night to impede the exit and entrance of the people. Jews used to carry stars in order to be identified with more ease. It sounds horrendous now, but it seems that the people from the middle ages were fine with it. Coming back to my stable, I can see that it had no windows in the 12th century. The ones that it has now have been added quite recently: one on the roof and one on top of my entrance door. There are only two windows in my stable/apartment.