Wikipedia: The half-timbered house is a special type of house that combines block, half-timbered and solid construction. Today's distribution area extends from Lower Silesia through Upper Lusatia and northern Bohemia to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.
The half-timbered house is characterized by the structural separation of the body of the room and the roof, or the body of the room and the upper floor. The main feature of the normal type is “a wooden support system, which is led around a log or plank room of the house on two or three sides with the task of relieving the body of the room from the load of the roof (in the case of one-story houses) or the roof and upper floor (in the case of two-story houses)".[2] The upper floor of the house rests with the roof on a wooden support frame made of wooden stands (the Umgebindejochen), which shows up as typical round arches on the outside. The ground floor is in it or underneath it. The ground floor windows in the plank wall under the round arches belong to this part, the log room. The house was literally surrounded. Its two components, the log room and the upper floor on the Umgebindejochen, remain statically independent.
An interesting element of many half-timbered houses is the door frame made of granite or sandstone, usually with the year the building was built. If they were ornately decorated, they often represented the social class of the owner. Wooden crates (Oberlausitzer crate) and foliations are also typical. Suns (radiant wooden crates on the gable), lightning snakes (snake-shaped boards or slate patterns on the gable, go back to a pagan water deity) and sundials can be found here and there.