Eltham Palace

This guide to Eltham Palace in London starts in nineteen thirty-three, when Stephen and Virginia Courtauld bought a ring-tailed lemur from Harrods just as they began turning this medieval palace into one of England's most dazzling Art Deco homes. You'll hear about the tropical-heated suite they built for their new companion, named Mah-Jongg, and about the fifteenth-century great hall where a young Henry VIII once ran as a boy. Look for how the couple's modern additions, from synchronized clocks to a centralized vacuum system, sit against the older stonework.