4 of 5Stockholm City Hall

Mosaic in the Golden Hall. The woman in the center is the "Queen of Lake Mälaren" (an old nickname for Stockholm), sitting in the center of the world, with The East and The West to her left and right. A couple of fun historical facts: First, the art critics of the day were not merciful to the poor woman in the center. She was universally condemned as being just plain ugly and not representative of Stockholm. Since the artist had used his own wife as model, that criticism hit very close to home and he explained her appearance thusly: "Her eyes are big, so she can watch over the citizens, her feet are big so she can stand firm, and her hair symbolize the Sun (and not Medusa's snakes, as had been asserted)". The second fun fact is that it took a couple of years to finish the mosaic, only for the workers to realize they had made a huge mistake. As you can see on the photo, the bottom edge of the mosaic is a slight bit above the floor, and the top of the mosaic is a slight bit below the ceiling. What happened was that the artist in charge forgot about the bottom padding, and the whole mosaic is therefore about a foot too far up. Of course, by the time this was noticed it was far too late to do anything about it and still make the deadline. This isn't really noticable on this side, but near the entrance to the Golden Hall there is a picture of Stockholm's patron saint, St. Erik, whose head has been chopped off by the ceiling.

Album: City Hall