Behind the street doors of Sololaki, merchant apartment houses keep their best work private. The *sadarbazo* — the shared entrance hall — is painted floor to ceiling: garlands, peacocks, Darial Gorge vignettes, a "Persian" hall in carpet polychrome.

This system borrows that logic. An ochre lime-plaster ground carries everything; a panelled olive-sage dado holds the base of every surface; vine friezes divide instead of rules; and amber and cobalt lozenges, leaded in black, stand in for the skylight that drops daylight onto a SALVE mosaic floor.