Summary (by AI): I visited the Birmingham Piccadilly Cinema arcade to see the oddly named ceiling murals and found the experience fun, though the run-down setting and the confusing artwork left me feeling a bit perplexed.
Blog: Birmingham has its fair share of obscure entries on the website, but this one particularly caught my eye. I thought, I’m going to have to go there, because it just sounded completely random. It jumped out at me specifically because of the name: A Life in the Year of the Chinchillas.
I was like, what even is that?
So, I looked up the entry on the website. It turns out there’s a place called the Birmingham Piccadilly Cinema, which was later turned into a shopping arcade.
Now, this shopping arcade is just around the corner from the Bullring, but it’s a shadow of its former self. To be honest, at this point in time, it basically seems like a cut-through to the station. There are a few shops in there, but they aren't particularly nice.
But the thing that makes it interesting is that when they refurbished the place back in 1989, they installed five huge panels on the ceiling that stretch all the way along the arcade. They are painted in trompe l’œil—I think that's how you say it—which is basically an optical illusion. Each one is designed to make you feel like you are looking up directly into a scene.
The final panel is a bit of a weird one: it’s a funeral scene. You actually get the perspective of looking up at the mourners from inside the grave.
I mean, it was fun, though the paintings themselves weren't mind-blowing. And I still, for the life of me, can't work out why on earth it’s called A Life in the Year of the Chinchillas. To be honest, I'm not even a hundred percent sure I saw a chinchilla in any of them!
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