Attraction
The Grand Gallery
Marble halls of sculpture and the voyaging-murals of the ancestors, open to all by ancient endowment.
The Grand Gallery, on the inner ring, holds the art of the island: long marble halls of sculpture, the painted galleries, and the cabinets of the small arts. The sculpture is of the first rank — the work of Vaitia of the Marble and her school foremost among it, and held, in the island's phrase, to breathe. The painted halls run from the great voyaging-murals of the ancestors, storeys high, to the quiet studies of the rings.
It is arranged not by age but by theme, in the island's fashion: a Hall of the Ancestors hung with the voyaging-murals; a Hall of the Rings, where the city paints itself; a Hall of the Far Sky, given to the things the navigators bring back word of; and the long Cabinet of Small Wonders, where the carved gems, the lacquer, the feather-work and the painted ware are kept under the gentle light. Musicians play in the rotunda on rest-days, and the copyists' benches are open to any citizen who would learn a master's hand.
The Gallery is open to every citizen, and to the visitor in the Order's company; admission is free, by an endowment older than the present rings, and the halls are never empty.