What tiles can be used for outside walls?

[Garald]

I am considering insulating a wall from the outside. (It is already insulated from the inside; long story.) Since I'd have to sink a great deal of money into that, I might as well leave it looking exactly as I want it to. The dominant term, as always, is labor costs - so, the possibility of using fancy tile suggests itself: it shouldn't cost much to lay, and the total cost of the tile itself should be dwarfed by that of the insulation project as a whole.

 

Questions:

1. What kinds of wall tiles survive Paris-area weather (which is basically southern English weather, except for the coldest weeks, which are colder, and the hottest weeks, which are hotter and drier)?

2. We are talking about tile on a not very thick layer of some sort of plaster, on a mesh, on blocks of insulation. Is tile too heavy for this task? Should I not get any tiles beyond a certain minimal thickness (which would be what?)?

 

For the record, I am thinking of something vaguely like this, sans bell:

 

 

and not something like this, which would be outside my budget:

 

 

Here is a blurry photograph of the current state of my wall:

 

 

 

 

 

[Conor]

Not an expert but I would have thought you'd be better off battening the insulation, fitting cement board, and tiling that?

[Garald]

39 minutes ago, Conor said:

Not an expert but I would have thought you'd be better off battening the insulation, fitting cement board, and tiling that?

Well, sure whatever decoration gets applied would be on top of a board. Will ask about battening; one of the insulation guys made it sound as if the main structural element were a mesh.

[Conor]

5 hours ago, Garald said:

Well, sure whatever decoration gets applied would be on top of a board. Will ask about battening; one of the insulation guys made it sound as if the main structural element were a mesh.

Mesh will be in the render basecoat. I don't see point in all that if you're tiling. The rainscreen method makes more sense to me, but again, need to speak to an expert. 

[Garald]

4 hours ago, Conor said:

Mesh will be in the render basecoat. I don't see point in all that if you're tiling. The rainscreen method makes more sense to me, but again, need to speak to an expert. 

Well, clearly I'm not going for an all-ceramic facade; I'd just have ceramic around the doors and windows, at most, or perhaps in a strip at the bottom.

[Garald]

Here are some examples of tiles outdoors in Madrid (where temperatures are often sub-freezing in winter) - exposed to plenty of humidity but apparently still holding their own.

 

 

(This is the museum-house of the painter Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923).)