Above the Stained Glass Windows – Royal Ontario Museum, Bloor Street, Toronto, Ontario

The Rotunda, dedicated in honour of Ernest and Elizabeth Samuel, is the Royal Ontario Museum’s ceremonial entrance hall. It features one of the Museum’s most magnificent architectural treasures – a spectacular mosaic dome that has fascinated generations of staff and visitors.

Charles T. Currelly, the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, conceived of this mosaic introduction for the 1933 addition. The mosaic ceiling was designed to reflect the breadth of the collections, being adorned with patterns and symbols representing cultures throughout the ages and around the world.

The ceiling is made from thousands of sheets of imported Venetian glass, cut into more than a million tiny coloured squares. A team of skilled workers laboured for eight months to install the ceiling. Its sparkling gold, rust and bronze background is inset with red, blue and turquoise patterns, recalling the magnificent mosaics of the Byzantine world and Eastern Europe. Worked out on the golden field are geometrical borders and panels which frame decorative floral designs. The central panel is inscribed with a passage from the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible: "That all men may know his work."

Each of the sixteen pictorial images on the ceiling and adjacent niches symbolizes a different culture throughout history. In this photo, we see a magical elephant representing India; a three-clawed dragon, representing China; a heraldic griffin of Gothic art; and a Mesopotamian ziggurat.

The ceiling is complemented by a stained glass window with 18 panels. Each panel has a red or blue bird in the center surrounded by concentric geometric shapes most of which are a light blue-green hue.