Musée des Arts Décoratifs

This guide to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Strasbourg opens in October 1744, when King Louis the Fifteenth, marching toward the front, was diverted here for five days of extravagant welcome, wine spouting from stone dolphins and swans, fireworks over the Ill, and magistrates formally greeting him inside this former bishops' palace. You'll hear how the city paid for it afterward, and about the Hannong family, whose porcelain workshop once furnished Strasbourg's grandest tables. Look for the cases of porcelain and silverware built to hold a feast like the one that once unfolded here.