Musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design

This guide to the Musee des Arts decoratifs et du Design in Bordeaux opens with a question: what was sugar worth in 1778, if it could raise a three-storey stone mansion on a Bordeaux street? The answer runs through Pierre de Raymond de Lalande, a Bordeaux parliament counselor whose fortune came from a sugar factory and coffee plantation on Saint-Domingue worked by enslaved people, and architect Etienne Laclotte's grecque-style design, raised between 1775 and 1779. Stand in the courtyard between house and garden and picture the coffee once served in these rooms to Bordeaux's elite.