In the entrance foyer of the Taj Cape Town (originally the Reserve Bank central banking area) stand four grand columns. They’re presently all boxed up to ensure that, while building is taking place, they remain unscathed.

These columns have a long history and were, originally, a sense of great and continued frustration for James Morris (the Reserve Bank architect).

Morris was a phenomenal architect and he was exceptionally pedantic about both the interior and exterior appearance of his buildings.

For the Reserve Bank columns he sourced, all the way from Sweden, a mottled green and cream Cippolino (a type of marble). When the pillars arrived, and they were unpacked, Morris was convinced that he’d been had; that a cheaper marble had been sold to him at an inflated price.

A court case proved Morris’s suspicions right but it also shed some light on the exorbitant amount Morris had spent on these columns. The taxpayers were outraged and they insisted that the government curb their reckless spending! Due to this pressure, from the taxpayers, the green and cream Cippolino columns were scrapped and replaced with, the more cost effective, cream and brown Portuguese Styros columns.

These Portuguese Styros are the columns presently hiding behind the protective casings in the Taj Cape Town foyer.