A mantelpiece is the shelf that runs along the top of the frame around a fireplace, often wood or stone. People stand a clock there, or photographs, candles, or little prizes — it is the show shelf in the room, the place your eye goes when you walk in. In British English this is the everyday home word; Americans often say just mantel for the same shelf, or for the whole frame. It belongs to houses with a real fire, so in a Taiwan apartment you meet it more in stories and films than on the wall. It is ordinary, a little old-fashioned, not a technical word. Though actually, people still call it a mantelpiece when the fire is fake — a wooden frame with no chimney — because the shelf is doing the same job.