Hôtel van Eetvelde: main hall

The luxurious interior, replete with marbles and gilt bronze, features a staircase and landings wrapped around a double-height octagonal hall near the centre of the plan. A shallow glass dome, which is supported by elliptical arches above a circle of iron columns, lights the hall; across the dome, long, leaf-like tendrils of coloured glass continue the sinuous curves of the structure below.

Much more use was made of iron as a building material in this building than in the previous structures by Horta. Glass partitions between slender cast-iron struts surround the central core of the house. The ornaments grow out of the supports of the glass ceiling, which pulls together the octagonal space and lends it a floating and yet enclosed lightness.