Photo Essay: Staircase at Courtland Gallery

In a previous essay, I talked about going to the Courtland Gallery to see the Michelangelo Dream Exhibition. But the building itself is brilliant. And in particular, the staircase in the building can perhaps legitimately claim to be one of the most photographed and famous staircases in the world. Here’s a short photo essay on this eye-catching architectural marvel.



From the top, it looks like a mildly interesting staircase, going down to the basement. Nothing majorly exciting or eye catching. The stairs are made out of marble, the banisters are out of wrought iron and are painted blue.

This is a very old staircase, dating back hundreds of years. You can see where they have repaired the breaks in the marble by inserting another dovetailed marble piece into the step.

There is an elevator to go up and down, and then there is a another staircase as well. This photo is a shot looking up at the other staircase. Presumably this was the servants staircase?

But the real impact comes when you end up in the basement and look up

 
Another two views of the staircase, slightly shifted. As somebody said, it looks like the interior of a snail. Beautiful.