Early Tuesday, the former president's body was carried from the Capitol Rotunda, where he lay in state for three days, and brought down a marble hall by military pallbearers to lie outside the Senate chamber.

NPR: President Ford Eulogized in National Cathedral

They financed some of Shanghai's finest colonial architecture, including the magnificent Children's Palace (formerly the Kadoorie estate, Marble Hall), the art deco Peace Hotel (then the Cathay Hotel) and Shanghai Mansions, a Sassoon building that was used to process, and illegally house at times, hundreds of refugees.

CNN: The Ghosts of Shanghai

The 1911 structure opens into a grand white marble reception hall with large public rooms for entertaining.

FORBES: Connect

She said a "spectacular" spot had been picked out for the eight-foot high marble statue in the city hall and its citizens would have no trouble recalling the former Tory leader because they were largely of retirement age.

BBC: Thatcher statue unveiled

Behind the hall, a 17m marble carriageway carved with dragons leads up to the entrance.

BBC: Beijing's once Forbidden City

But nowhere has Congress's penchant for inefficiency been more manifest than in the new Capitol Visitor Centre, a 580, 000 square foot (54, 000 square metre) subterranean hall lined in white marble, which has just opened next to the Capitol itself.

ECONOMIST: When it comes to mismanagement, Congress is hard to beat

The slim, cubic form of the Hotel Lamee, opened in October, belies the glamorous 1930s Hollywood style of its 32 rooms all of which have richly upholstered, hall noise-silencing doors and marble bathrooms.

BBC: Business trip: Vienna

"Saddam will be vanquished by the power of God" is etched in Arabic over and over again on the marble walls of the palace's imposing rotunda hall.

WSJ: Turf Battle Forms Over Hussein's Palaces