Trinity Church's interior is considered to be one of the most beautiful examples of ecclesiastical design in the world. A dramatic contrast to the solidity of the church's exterior, it is inside that people make an emotional connection to the building.

The murals of master painter John La Farge
La Farge's wall paintings sparked the American Mural Movement and are credited with creating a new and distinctive American esthetic. La Farge and a team of artists decorated the church interior in less than five months through a bitter cold winter, using coal braziers to keep the paint from freezing.

The finest craftsmanship
The great wooden doors from Copley Square into Trinity's narthex lead to a warm interior unlike that of any other church built before it. Wood elements accent the space that soars overhead, articulated by semicircular arches. The sanctuary walls are a deep red, and La Farge's elaborate murals cover the walls up to the upper reaches of the great central tower that rises more than 100 feet above the church floor. Among the original carved elements are the woodcarvings on pews. Skilled craftsmen wove an inventive vocabulary of sacred and secular designs into the interior of the building, continuing the theme of fine stone carving that decorates the exterior of the church.

Trinity's world-class collection of 19th century stained glass windows is the church's crowning jewel. The most astonishing feature of Trinity's windows is their sheer diversity. The windows range from traditional English and ornate French styles to pre-Raphaelite expression and American opalescent techniques. Nine of the most important stained glass makers working on both sides of the Atlantic contributed 33 dramatically different windows, all but five of them within ten years of the church's completion in 1877.

Until he won the commission to oversee the decorative scheme of Trinity Church, painter John La Farge had only dabbled in stained glass. However, La Farge created several of Trinity's most beautiful stained glass windows, pioneering a technique of layering opalescent glass that allowed him to create bold new effects in color, shading, and three-dimensional space. Stunning displays of La Farge's opalescent glasswork can be seen in two windows: The New Jerusalem and his masterwork Christ in Majesty. Experts have heralded Christ in Majesty as one of the most significant examples of stained glass in the country.