Trim (pronounced as treem, not trim) is the local term on the island of Hvar for a corbelled dry stone shelter, mostly for people and more rarely for livestock.
For at least six thousand years corbelling has been the ingenious way of constructing a top covering of a dry stone building that is in dry stone itself, i.e., using only stones and no binding material, no mortar or concrete, as well as no truss to support it. The problem was brilliantly solved in the Late Stone Age or Early Bronze Age, yielding the so-called false dome. If the stones are laid properly, the dome comes out rainproof, as it should be.
The whole building is mostly in uncoursed, rough dry stone masonry, and only some key elements (e.g. lintel or door posts) are constructed with half-dressed stones.
The island of Hvar offers one of the world’s pinnacles of traditional dry stone architecture. The trims of Hvar are real masterpieces of dry stone masonry, built with much skill and care, and their abundance is astonishing. They are everywhere – hard not to see.