Words to Describe...: Words to Describe a Place

I imagine they’re all these ancient buildings with steeples, stained-glass windows, and those kneeling benches like you see in movies. Dumplin'

The stone buildings and the concrete pavements looked bleak and hostile to me. Black Boy

Stretching across 800 square miles of bucolic hills, Britain’s Cotswolds region includes countless charming villages in five counties that personify the enduring appeal of the English countryside. New York Times (May 17, 2018)

Fifteen hundred employees filed into the Structures Research Laboratory, a cavernous facility located across a dusty clearing from the Warehouse Building, to hear Knox’s address. Hidden Figures

Kayenta Art Village is a charming area full of galleries, gift shops, restaurants and coffee shops. Seattle Times (Jul 24, 2021)

The buildings, particularly the ones for the prison staff, were clean and contemporary; but the housing for the prisoners was archaic and dirty. Long Walk to Freedom

Kraków was not only a historic city but also a cosmopolitan and glittering cultural center, full of theaters and cafés, an opera house and nightclubs. The Boy on the Wooden Box

Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict, and unoccupied. Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

The place was as silent as a tomb and appeared to be deserted. The Hot Zone

Now the three travelers were standing on a desolate plain, with no signs of any kind of life whatsoever. Norse Mythology

Hampton High School was a dilapidated, musty old building. Hidden Figures

The courthouse is an imposing, old, pillared brick building occupying a full city block, but the entrance is off to the side, down a set of steps. The Namesake

The multistoried labyrinthine building includes a central courtyard, numerous rooms and corridors and large baths, storerooms, craft workshops and an intricate plumbing system. New York Times (Jul 22, 2010)

We’d passed several palaces, each grander and more luxurious than the last. Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

The place was palatial, with a large central structure topped with a golden dome, and walls of the native honey stone. Strange the Dreamer

The sun was overhead, and a majestic palace of crystal was before him. When the Sea Turned to Silver

The lodge was modern and very warm, with an open lobby dominated by a stone fireplace, and the sort of anonymously comfortable rooms you would find in a Holiday Inn. A Walk in the Woods

“Manorbier is a magical place, the most romantic castle in the world,” she says of this picturesque 12th-century manor on the rugged coast of Wales, which she inherited three years ago. Washington Post (Sep 29, 2016)

The farmers, who lived in quaint stone cottages surrounded by broad fields, grew yellow squash and long green beans and bushels of wheat. Ash

Our sleeping quarters were no longer two beds in a comfortable traditional home but a single cot in a rather ramshackle rectangular house with a rusting tin roof. New York Times (Sep 22, 2014)

In the dining alcove of a rustic farmhouse in the hills of Italy, the banquette and oak table were custom made. Architectural Digest (Dec 13, 2013)

Ten years before the flames, I was born in the mountains, a scenic land of jewel-green fields, bamboo trees, and forests inhabited by gorillas, elephants, and chimpanzees. How Dare the Sun Rise

Central High’s building was so tall and so stately that I thought it looked like a university as well. March Forward, Girl

There are teeming towns filled with merchants, beggars, guards, thieves, craftsmen and kings. New York Times (Nov 25, 2011)

It’s an old photograph of the four of us—me, my mom and dad and brother—standing on a beach, someplace tropical. Everything, Everything