But this is an hotel that mixes ancient with modern, and the reception lobby, in comparison, looks almost space-age, with a vast glass ceiling above and an open view on to the breakfast room a floor below.
A wood-burning stove on a granite base warms a vast bedroom, above.
Daybreak over Texas, and Georgia O'Keeffe is out in the landscape, mesmerised by the vast skies above her.
Those jumping field lines thread galaxies, rise in vast arches above the Sun and drift through space on the solar wind.
A vast sign above the tent's entrance spoke volumes about the barrel-chested confidence that underpinned the whole event: "Creation Records," it read.
He is filled with boredom and simmering rage, combined with a dizzying sense of claustrophobia and inferno ("At a vast distance above my underground salon, houses take root, mists assemble").
A vast hoarding above the town entrance showed a couple and their single child and the message: "When every family benefits from the family planning service, every village will rejoice and blossom".
Lifejacket and torch in hand, I am spirited inside by my boatman to a long-tail moored in the darkness, my beam picks out the vast space above me.
There is a ghostly air about the two premier events in the Barbican's English Originals festival, with near-forgotten spirits summoned up in verse and the fascinating contours of ancient black and white faces highlighted on a vast screen above the stage.
In El Alto, the vast shantytown above La Paz, residents blockaded thoroughfares to demand a national census that could lead to more government resources allocated to their rapidly expanding community, while in the southern city of Potosí demonstrators took to the streets to complain about the government's supposed failure to deliver development projects.
