It is a shame that Sir Edward Coke’s now-famous line “For a man’s house is his castle” rarely gets finished. Et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium was his second breath. It translates from Latin–actually Roman civil law compiled around 533 A.D.–as “One’s home is the safest refuge for everyone.”
In light of Sept. 11, that could be something of a national creed.
Although the context differs (Roman law declared that no person could be summoned into court from his home; Sir Edward in the 17th Century was urging privacy issues within the home), this idea of house-as-refuge has been kicking around “officially” for 1,468 years. People have been fighting one storm or another for centuries and finding their best safety–whether it is real or perceived–in their own hut, tent, houseboat, attic, villa, palace, farmhouse, apartment, suburban ranch.
It is with this sense of universality that the Home&Garden section kicks off this multipart series, Finding Sanctuary. Every month, we will be visiting people and families around the world and discovering how they make their house a sanctuary for body and soul.
A number of these people have storms outside their front doors–whether it is violence, a dense population or geographic isolation–and their homes reflect that need for refuge. Others simply offer an interesting glimpse into the homes and home life of another culture where the American standards–of 2,230 square feet, with four bedrooms, 2 1/2 to 3 baths, a two-car garage (at least), a fireplace, 9-foot ceilings and an upscale kitchen with walk-in pantry and central island–are so very irrelevant.
We will be traveling today to the very Ottoman world of Serdar Gulgun, an art expert in Istanbul, Turkey, and, later, to a five-story, pencil-thin home nestled in between commerce on the dense streets of downtown Tokyo, a remote Icelandic island inhabited by only two brothers and their families, and a 100-plus-year-old garhi in a part of India where battles between Rajput kings and Muslim invaders have raged over the centuries.
We also will report on a couple who fled from Rwanda to create a new sanctuary in Dakar, Senegal, and a family of five who have painted a place of peace in their terraced Belfast home. We will wind up with the story about a home right here in Chicago.
Different? You bet. But in a world of contrasts, and often conflicts, we found a blessedness in all of their solutions, in the feeling of sanctuary that they all have created in their homes.
First stop: Istanbul, Turkey
