page_title: Criterion Restaurant
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Criterion Restaurant / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Criterion Restaurant semi-precious stones - jade, mother of pearl, turquoise.
context_page_description: The Criterion Restaurant is an opulent restaurant complex facing Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London. It was built by architect Thomas Verity in Neo-Byzantine style for the partnership Spiers and Pond, which opened it in 1873. Apart from fine dining facilities it has a bar. It is a Grade II* listed building and is in the Top 10 most historic and oldest restaurants in the world.
  In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is told of his prospective roommate after he meets a friend at the Criterion.
context_section_description: The Criterion Restaurant's front may still be regarded as the best surviving work of Thomas Verity, a leading theatre architect of his day.
  The Second Empire masterpieces of Charles Garnier—the Paris Opera House and the Monte Carlo Casino —seem to have influenced Verity's design, which is carried out in stone, now painted, and is composed of a central face slightly recessed between wings, all similar in width and three storeys high.
  As originally completed, however, the first two storeys of the central face contained a great round-arched opening forming the deeply recessed entrance to the restaurant. In each wing the first two storeys have three-bay openings, wide between narrow, flanked by wide piers.
  In the ground storey these piers are plain, but those above are dressed with segmental-pedimented niches containing statues. 
  A pedestal, with enriched panels in its die, underlines the lofty third storey where the central face has a group of three round-arched windows, their moulded archivolts rising from entablatures above plain piers flanked by Ionic half-columns.
  Carved in the spandrels are draped female figures, holding festoons looped below oblong tablets. 
  In each of the wings paired Corinthian plain-shafted pilasters flank an Ionic Venetian window, its arched middle light being of the same size as those in the central face, with a fan-shaped lunette of wide and narrow panels, the former ornamented and the latter plain. 
  The main entablature has an enriched architrave, a plain frieze except for the carved panels in the breaks above the Corinthian pilasters, and a dentilled and modillioned cornice which is returned to form large triangular pediments over the two wings.
  The high pedestal-parapet, its die enriched with ornamented panels, is a typically French feature, and so are the high pavilion roofs over the wings, with two tiers of dormers. 
  These, and the single-storey roof over the centre, are crested with railings of ornamental ironwork.
  One of the restaurant's most famous features is the Long Bar, which retains the 'glistering' ceiling of gold mosaic, coved at the sides and patterned all over with lines and ornaments in blue and white tesserae.
  The wall decoration accords well with the real yellow gold leaf ceiling, being lined with warm marble and formed into blind arcades with semi-elliptical arches resting on slender octagonal columns, their unmolded capitals and the impost being encrusted with goldground mosaic.
caption: Restaurant incorporates semi-precious stones such as jade, mother of pearl, turquoise.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4", "Image DateTime": "2014:01:20 10:50:35", "Image Artist": "JESSICA DOBBS", "Image ExifOffset": "230", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "806", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "27498", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/25", "EXIF FNumber": "9/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1000", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:01:19 11:29:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:01:19 11:29:00", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "290241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "847997/500000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "13/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "85", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "250400/71", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "666800/189", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "Charlie Troman", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "302143", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[85, 85, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "85.0 mm"}