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.

At this time, Damascus was part of the Ottoman Empire, its capital Istanbul. The Empire was a formidable power that often clashed with European forces. Think back to the large canvases by Tiepolo that I showed you earlier—they were painted for the Venetian home of a family involved in several campaigns against the Ottomans, around the same time this room was designed. In spite of frequent hostilities between East and West, trade was seldom interrupted; you may recall the Turkish carpet in the painting by Dutch artist Vermeer.

Our next stop takes us westward again and forward in time, to nineteenth-century Paris. Make your way back through these galleries and then turn left and left again.