The world’s most beautiful Christmas windows seen as works of set design: Galeries Lafayette and Printemps in Paris, Selfridges and Harrods in London, Saks and Bergdorf Goodman in New York, La Rinascente in Milan. Architecture, authors and 2026 dates.
A well made Christmas window is a theatre two metres wide and one metre deep: whoever designs it works like a set designer, with a year to prepare and the space of a single step on the pavement to persuade passers by to stop.
The Christmas windows of the great historic department stores are one of the few forms of ephemeral architecture that millions of people go out of their way to see every year. In Paris, the Galeries Lafayette unveil theirs on Thursday 12 November 2026, with a project entrusted to Jean-Charles de Castelbajac; in London, New York and Milan the unveilings usually fall between November and early December. From Boulevard Haussmann to Fifth Avenue, the ritual has been the same for more than a century: a façade becomes a stage and the street becomes the stalls.
Our editors look at them with a designer’s eye, because that is what they are: set design applied to the city. Behind every window there is a subject, a scale, a lighting plan and a rhythm that follows the audience’s pace along the pavement. When the design works, the building’s architecture is the frame and the window is the picture.
Why are Christmas windows a work of set design?
Because they have all its tools: a fixed proscenium, a moving audience and a story to tell in a few seconds. The modern tradition began in Paris in 1909, when Le Bon Marché presented the first animated window, devised with the automaton maker Gaston Decamps and dedicated to Robert Peary’s expedition to the North Pole. Since then the Christmas window has become a stage machine, with mechanisms, moving figures and sound.
Today, as the Galeries Lafayette themselves explain, a Christmas window takes a full year of work, from idea to model, from production to installation, and brings together puppeteers, engineers, illustrators, sculptors, sound designers and motion designers. It is exactly the team behind a theatre production, compressed behind a sheet of glass.
Which are the most beautiful Christmas windows in Paris?
The most celebrated are on Boulevard Haussmann, where the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps have faced each other for more than a century in a contest of automata, light and stagecraft. The Galeries Lafayette have dressed their windows since the early twentieth century, at the wish of founders Théophile Bader and Alphonse Kahn, and still produce them in house.
The real heart of Christmas, though, is inside: the 1912 dome designed by Ferdinand Chanut, with stained glass by master glassmaker Jacques Gruber and ironwork by Louis Majorelle and Edouard Schenck, in a language that blends Art Nouveau with a neo Byzantine taste. Every year the Christmas tree rises beneath that dome, one of the rare cases in which a temporary installation holds its own against historic architecture. For 2026 the windows and decorations are by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, under the title Au cœur de Noël.
Next door, Printemps Haussmann is another lesson in commercial architecture: designed by Paul Sédille, opened in 1865 and rebuilt after the fire of 1881, it has been a listed historic monument since 1992. Its Christmas windows usually open in the first days of November and are among the richest in animated characters, with an attention to detail that rewards a close look.
Why are London’s Christmas windows different?
Because in London the window was born as a tool of showmanship even before it was a tool of selling. Selfridges opened on Oxford Street on 15 March 1909, in the building designed by Daniel Burnham, with a frontage by Francis Swales: a run of Ionic columns that hides the steel frame and frames 27 windows on the street. According to the company’s own history, they were the first department store windows to be lit at night, and they drew crowds at all hours.
Harry Gordon Selfridge, whom his contemporaries called the showman of shopping, understood that a façade can be a programme schedule. Oxford Street’s Christmas windows are still among the most theatrical in Europe, often built as a serial story that you read by walking from one end of the building to the other.
Harrods, in Knightsbridge, plays the architecture card instead. The building by C. W. Stephens, built between 1894 and 1905 and listed Grade II*, is a façade that at night, with thousands of bulbs along its outline, becomes a Christmas decoration in its own right. Here the windows are jewels in a casket: more restrained, more precious, designed for a clientele that arrives from all over the world.
Which are the most famous Christmas windows in New York?
The most famous are on Fifth Avenue, at Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman in particular. The Saks flagship at 611 Fifth Avenue, designed by Starrett & van Vleck and opened in 1924, has been a designated landmark since 1984 and stands right opposite Rockefeller Center. For around twenty years its façade was the screen for a Christmas light show; suspended in 2024, it returned in 2025, proof of how much that ritual now belongs to the city.
Bergdorf Goodman is the most refined case. The Buchman & Kahn building, opened in 1928 on the site of Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s mansion, is clad in white marble and has 35 ground floor windows. Since 1996 their design has been tied to the name of David Hoey and a team of more than a hundred people: the windows are true stage sets, close to art installations, where fashion is the pretext and craft is the real protagonist.
What is the Christmas window at La Rinascente in Milan like?
La Rinascente in Piazza Duomo is the Italian department store with the richest design history, and its Christmas windows should be read within that story. Gabriele D’Annunzio chose the name in 1917; the store burned down on Christmas night 1918, a few days before its opening, and was razed by bombing in 1943. It reopened on 4 December 1950 with a façade by Ferdinando Reggiori and windows, entrances and interiors by Carlo Pagani.
Much of Milan’s design culture has passed through that rebuilt store. In 1954 La Rinascente founded the Compasso d’Oro, conceived by Gio Ponti, Livio Castiglioni and Alberto Rosselli, and in 1957 a young Giorgio Armani worked there as a window dresser. At Christmas the windows facing Piazza Duomo, a few steps from the Galleria, become a stage, the most important in Italy, and our editors suggest pairing it with Milan’s Christmas markets. For the story of other great stores, see our guide to iconic department stores.
What makes a Christmas window ephemeral architecture?
What makes it architecture is that it is designed for a specific place, duration and audience, exactly like a pavilion. The best windows work on three levels: scale, which moves from craft detail to the overall view from the opposite pavement; light, which has to work in the darkness of five in the afternoon; and rhythm, the sequence of scenes that accompanies whoever walks past.
The same rules apply at home, on a smaller scale. A single well placed light is worth more than ten strings switched on at once, as we explain in our guide to Christmas lights at home, and a tree becomes memorable when it speaks to the space around it, as the world’s most beautiful Christmas trees show. Looking at the windows with this kind of attention is the best way to take home something more than a photo.
Frequently asked questions about Christmas windows
Which are the most beautiful Christmas windows in the world?
The most celebrated are those of the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps in Paris, Selfridges and Harrods in London, and Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman in New York. In Italy the benchmark is La Rinascente in Piazza Duomo, Milan.
When are the Galeries Lafayette Christmas windows 2026 unveiled?
The Boulevard Haussmann windows designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac are unveiled on Thursday 12 November 2026.
When did animated Christmas windows begin?
The first animated window was presented by Le Bon Marché in Paris in 1909, with automata by Gaston Decamps dedicated to Robert Peary’s North Pole expedition.
How long does it take to design a Christmas window?
At department stores such as the Galeries Lafayette it takes about a year, from the initial idea to the model, through to production and installation.
Where can you see Christmas windows in Italy?
The benchmark is La Rinascente in Piazza Duomo, Milan, whose windows face the Duomo, a few steps from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
