Hôtel Solvay

This guide to the Hotel Solvay in Brussels starts with a client telling architect Victor Horta there was no budget, and follows what Horta did with that freedom: two dozen kinds of marble, a golden skylight over the stairwell, and staircase decoration by painter Theo van Rysselberghe. It traces the house through the mid-twentieth century, when Art Nouveau mansions across the city were being gutted, and the Brussels fashion family who moved their workshop inside instead. Look up in the entrance hall for the fan-shaped skylight Horta built the whole stairwell around.