Where Light Learned Silence — A Poetic Lighting Installation for King Charles’s House in Viscri

Where Light Learned Silence

There is a place, deep in the heart of Transylvania,

where light moves slowly.

Viscri.

A village suspended in time,

where wood still carries the echo of the hands that shaped it

and limewashed walls breathe with the patience of truth.

In the house of King Charles III of the United Kingdom,

I was invited to bring my light.

Not a light to reveal, but a light to remain unseen.

From the first moment I entered, I understood this was not a place to illuminate it was a place to listen.

Every beam, every knot of wood, every shadow had a quiet voice.

They asked me not to disturb their stillness, but to add only a breath a soft presence,

a pause between sounds.

I excluded all visible fixtures, all gestures that could break the harmony of the room.

I wasn’t looking to build a lamp, but a trace of light that could exist without imposing itself.

So a single white line was born — suspended above the desk with nearly invisible nylon threads.

A weightless beam, as if light had simply decided to stay for a while.

Everything was crafted on site, in just two days, by hand, in silence.

The light touches wood the way one might touch something alive.

It caresses the ceramics, honors the textures, and remains discreet — listening.

Viscri is a rare place.

A small world where King Charles III chose to preserve time, to rediscover the beauty of slowness and presence.

As the BBC once described, it’s a corner of Romania where the King feels close to the land’s soul — a land made of silence, craft, and dignity.

(BBC News)

Through the Prince of Wales Foundation, he has supported the restoration of traditional architecture and local craft, turning heritage into a living language of the future.

And through the

King Charles III Charitable Fund,

the

Anglo-Romanian Trust for Traditional Architecture,

and the

Prince’s Foundation Training Centre,

that spirit of preservation endures — protecting what cannot be replicated: authenticity.

My light now lives there.

It does not speak.

It listens.

It became part of the space, a pause between two breaths.

Perhaps that is the truest meaning of my work: not to create in order to be seen, but to help others see what was already there.

Tommaso Cristofaro