Galeries Lafayette Glass Dome
— a sky built in coloured glass.
Not only on a wall.
“A stained-glass coupole above the atrium of Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann. Designed by Ferdinand Chanut and completed in 1912, with the leaded glass by Jacques Gruber of the Nancy School and the wrought iron by Louis Majorelle. The dome rises forty-three metres over the perfume counters; the easiest view is from the third-floor balcony, looking up while a hundred years of light comes down through coloured glass. People go to Paris for the museums and the river and forget to go in. Admission is free.
Galeries Lafayette Glass Dome, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Galeries Lafayette Haussmann sits at 40 Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, two blocks north of the Palais Garnier opera house. The flagship store opened in 1912 in a building begun by Georges Chédanne. Its central atrium is crowned by a stained-glass coupole forty-three metres above the ground floor, a polychrome dome in neo-Byzantine form with Art Nouveau detailing. The architect of the coupole was Ferdinand Chanut, the leaded glass was the work of Jacques Gruber of the École de Nancy, and the wrought-iron balconies were by Louis Majorelle. The store remains in operation; the dome is visible free of charge from the central well of the perfume hall and the surrounding upper-floor galleries.
The coupole reads as a colour wheel because Gruber loaded the leading with a deep amber and lapis palette inflected by emerald and rose, and the daylight comes through obliquely off the central oculus. The polychrome character sits closer to Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité than to the pale modernist domes that followed in the 1920s. Photographers gather on the third-floor balcony where the lens line stays clear of the chandeliers and the dome reads as a single composition; later in the afternoon the colour pools on the marble floor below. Direct sunlight changes the painting hour by hour and the dome looks different in November than it does in June.
The store is open Monday through Saturday from 10am to 8:30pm and Sunday from 11am to 8pm; the coupole is visible whenever the store is open and there is no ticket. The main entrance is on Boulevard Haussmann. The nearest Métro stations are Chaussée d'Antin – La Fayette and Havre – Caumartin, both within two minutes' walk. The best vantages are the third- and fourth-floor balconies that ring the central well; the ground-floor view directly under the dome is worth a minute as the colour pools on the marble. Crowds peak on Saturday afternoons and across the December window-display season; weekday mornings are quiet.