All around this winter reception room, you see signs of comfort and welcome. An archway and a fountain draw you in, and beyond, on a raised platform, built-in benches offer seats for guests. Every surface is richly decorated—just look at the ceiling, the niches in the walls, and the woodwork, with fruit and flowers in relief and poetic inscriptions in Arabic. A similar, but more open, summer reception room would have been across a courtyard from this one.

This interior comes from the Syrian city of Damascus and dates to 1707. Damascus was then a provincial trading center, and this decoration gives you the flavor of an affluent merchant’s house.