The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: August twenty-first, in an architectural fantasyland.

In 1926, Sir Clough Williams- Ellis, a well-known Welsh architect, set out to create an ideal village on the shores of Tremadog Bay in northwest Wales. Over the next 50 years, he assembled what can only be called a Home for Fallen buildings. On the rocky peninsula, he created a charming, if bizarre pastiche of pastel buildings, fountains, statuary, and facades. He called his dream village Portmeirion.

All of Portmeirion's structures are architecturally accurate. The village's primary style is Italianate, but with numerous flourishes of Oriental, Gothic, and Georgian. There's an 18th-century town hall and a central piazza, complete with campanile and colonnade.

Mind you, no one has actually ever lived in Portmeirion, which has always been operated by a charitable trust. The village is open for day tours and can also accommodate overnight visitors. Portmeirion Hotel has fourteen rooms, and several cottages and suites located throughout the village can be rented by the week. Portmeirion's long list of celebrated guests includes such famous English writers as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Noel Coward wrote his play Blithe Spirit during a week's stay in Portmeirion. The village was also the setting of the quirky, sixties television series, "The Prisoner." 

Portmeirion is surrounded on three sides by acres of woodland gardens. The village's fourth side opens on Tremadog Bay and the Irish Sea. All in all, it's a place of delightful whimsy, which has been described as sort of a Gilbert and Sullivan approach to architecture.  

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