Many of these magnificent residential buildings now housing great collections were built before 1789 when Talleyrand claimed you have to have lived before to have known true douceur de vie. That is, of course, if you were rich. If you were poor, life is always miserable, nasty, brutish and thankfully short.

There are scores of them: Musées Rodin, Carnavalet, Cognacq-Jay, Jacquemart-André, Marmottan Monet, etc. The one housing the Musée de l’histoire de France, Hôtel Soubisse, is of particular interest to us, it also lent its name to an onion flavoured versatile version of Béchamel.

Marketman, the Picasso museum was originally built by a very successful salt merchant.

Yes, they are hung up on ginormous chandeliers. https://www.alain-ducasse.com/en/restaurant/alain-ducasse-au-plaza-athenee

A friend kept a tiny antique shop on Lexington Ave and 72nd for close to forty years for which he paid sixty thousand annual rent toward the end of his tenure. He crammed the police outpost of a place and an offsite storage with objects gleaned from the flea markets all around town. A minor sub-group of his amassment included antique copper gelatine moulds that he loaned to photographers from time to time for the now defunct Gourmet magazine. One afternoon, Paloma Picasso stepped into his shop, spun slowly around and stopped when her gaze fell on a plate with a drawing of a minotaur, her dad’s, in his early ceramic phase. Wanted to buy it but not outright for the price quoted so she started diddling the price down with my stubborn friend until finally, after getting progressively exasperated, tried pulling rank by asking him if he knew who she was. My friend calmly replied, yes, a cheap bitch.