Leighton House

Sitting on a quiet street near Holland Park and designed in 1866 by George Aitchison, Leighton House was home to the eponymous Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–96), a painter belonging to the Olympian movement. The ground floor is decorated in an Orientalist style, with the exquisite Arab Hall added in 1879 and densely covered with blue and green tiles from Rhodes, Cairo, Damascus and Iznik in Turkey; a fountain trickles away in the centre. Even the wooden latticework of the windows and gallery was brought from Damascus. The house, undergoing a £1.3 million restoration at the time of research, contains notable pre-Raphaelite paintings by Burne-Jones, Watts, Millais and Lord Leighton himself.