Last week one of our travel designers spent an afternoon in one of the most extraordinarily beautiful buildings in London, Leighton House.

While it appears quite unremarkable from the street, with a simple red brick façade, this little gem on Holland Park is, in fact, a trove of unique styles, from the striking gold dome and ornate peacock blue tiles in the Arab Hall and Staircase Hall to the bright and stark second-floor conservatory, used as a winter studio and showroom.

Lord Leighton was a leading Victorian artist, perhaps best known for his painting Flaming June (which is currently on display at the Royal Academy). He epitomised the era with his Aestheticism and Pre-Raphaelite paintings, which sought to escape the ugliness and materialism of the Industrial Age. His home in London does the same for us today.