Location from Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The drowned levels of the House — vast marble halls claimed by the sea twice daily, where tides surge through vestibules and coral grows on the feet of statues.
When the tides come in, they come with a sound like thunder heard through a cathedral. The water enters from halls so distant they have no names, surging through vestibules in great rolling waves that boom against the marble walls and send spray cascading over the statues. At high tide, the Lower Halls are entirely submerged — an underwater gallery where stone figures stand in green silence, fish threading between their outstretched hands. At low tide, the halls drain slowly, leaving behind tidal pools rich with small fish, crabs, anemones, and the edible seaweed Piranesi harvests for food and fuel. The smell is briny and clean — salt and stone and the particular mineral scent of wet marble. Piranesi knows these halls well but respects them. The tides are not malicious, but they are not careful either. A person caught in the wrong vestibule at the wrong time will drown in beautiful surroundings.
Halls identical in architecture to the levels above, but transformed by water. The marble is stained green and brown with algae below the tide line. Coral encrusts the bases of statues and grows in the crevices of carved reliefs. Pools of seawater sit in every depression, reflecting the statues above them in dark, trembling mirrors. Seaweed drapes from niches like curtains. The light down here is green and shifting, filtered through water that is sometimes ankle-deep and sometimes overhead.
Also known as: The Drowned Halls, The Tidal Halls