Top ten most beautiful ceilings
Just tilting our heads up a few degrees reveals enormous wonder and beauty: the sky, birds, trees, planets, moons, the flying nun etc.... and beautiful ceilings!
Castello di Sammezzano, Leccio, Italy
The mesmerising ceiling, vaults and decor of the Peacock Room in this abandoned Italian palazzo near Florence speak for themselves. Peacocks, and other exotica, were the source of the inspired decoration to be found throughout the seemingly endless empty rooms of this daydream building. The Moorish-style makeover of what was a much older palace was the life work of Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragona. Although the aristocratic Italian architect, engineer, botanist, philosopher and politician never visited the Levant or the Orient, he imagined a world of exquisite and highly exotic forms and colours that he brought to life in Leccio between 1843 and 1889. A hotel in the 20th Century, the palazzo and its polychromatic Peacock Room are in limbo today. (Credit: Antonio Cinotti/Flickr cc by 2.0)
Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire
Completed in 1334 by the royal carpenter William Hurley, the exquisite timber lantern over the central octagonal tower of Ely Cathedral is one of the greatest feats of medieval structural engineering and design. From the cathedral floor, the lantern appears like the centre of a great, eight-pointed star, with a carving of Christ in Glory at its centre. Constructed primarily from eight English oak trees, the 30ft-high lantern is supported by highly visible timber fan vaulting and by a hidden tent-like lattice of oak beams. Wooden panels – decorated with painted angels in the 19th Century – can be opened around the lantern. Choristers, serving as a heavenly choir, sang through these from the roof of the fenland cathedral. (Credit: Steve Vidler / Alamy Stock Photo)
Shah Mosque, Isfahan
In 1598, Shah Abbas moved the Persian capital to Isfahan. Here, he commissioned a remarkable sequence of ambitious and beautiful religious and civic buildings. But, because the only readily available building material in Isfahan was baked mud brick, there was a fear that, however grand, the new buildings would look rather dull. New techniques in firing coloured mosaic tiles, however, allowed the Shah's architects to revel in wondrous displays of decoration, brought to perfection here in the Shah Mosque (1612-38). Designed by the master calligrapher and miniaturist Rezza Abbasi, the blue, yellow, turquoise, pink and green tiles catch and reflect the light of this bright and hot city, animating cool spaces under the great blue dome of Abbas's mosque. (Credit: Hossein Lohinejadian / Alamy Stock Photo)
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