#also artbreeder isn't as good with buildings as with faces

[queenlucythevaliant]

This is about how I visualize Cair Paravel on its little hill by the sea:

And then at sunrise the stone goes all golden like this for a few minutes:

If you've ever seen sunset over the Badlands or the Grand Canyon, I imagine it like that.

The Sunrise Castle

Cair Paravel is built in white stone, cut and polished so that it catches the light. When the sun is high, the castle glitters on the seashore like a gem. It can be seen from a great distance, from the hills and ridges of the surrounding country. Most days, the castle can be seen from Galma. On a clear day, a sharp-eyed man can make it out from the shores of Terebinthia. Eagles and Hawks and other birds of prey use the Cair to navigate; among Birds, it is called the East Beacon.

Yet it is at sunrise that Cair Paravel is the loveliest; anyone who has ever seen it will tell you so. At sunrise, the fires of dawn dance across the white stone and the castle itself glows pink and orange and gold, gold like an otherworldly ember. Standing on the beach, with the sunrise at your front and the Cair at your back, one can almost feel engulfed by light—so Edmund and Caspian and Lucy thought, at least until they saw the Last Sea.

Cair Paravel is also a castle of windows. Large windows; wide panes of uninterrupted glass created by dwarvish and mermish craftsmen who together excel at such things. The most desirable bedrooms face east; in them, one can throw open the curtains and gaze out at the sea from one’s own bed. Yet every living space in the castle has a view. The windows let the light in; there is scarcely any need for lamps in the Cair until evening falls.

It is not a large castle; certainly nothing like the Tisroc’s palace, nor even as large as Anvard. It is a castle built to awe its guests rather to intimidate them. It is built for beauty, not for power. Its rooms are comfortable and its hallways easy to navigate. Yet from within and without, it is a castle of light. As King Cor of Archenland once remarked, the Cair never lets you forget whose it is. A castle of light, standing on the easternmost shore of Narnia, which once a day glows gold with the sunrise: Cair Paravel belongs to Aslan.

Twice in its history, Cair Paravel was abandoned and left to molder. Both times, the shine went out of its stones. The white was covered in years and layers of dirt and neglect. The four kings and queens, sitting in its ruins, could not tell its stones from any others. Yet the light still shone through the empty places where great panes of glass, now broken, had once sat. From Stone Table hill, the castle still shone on the seashore. Peter could see it, when he stood at Aslan’s side.