I expected Versailles to be the one. It wasn't. I was in Paris last week - a proper week off, no agenda, just wandering. Versailles was on the list. I went, I was impressed, I moved on. But it was the Palais Garnier that I kept coming back to. Still thinking about it now, if I'm honest. If you haven't been: it's Charles Garnier's opera house, built in 1875, Napoleon III style. The sort of building that doesn't believe in leaving a single surface undecorated. Gold leaf, marble, frescoes, chandeliers the size of small cars. The Grand Staircase alone - white marble, red and green balustrades, thirty-metre vaulted ceiling - had me standing there longer than I'd admit. But it was the Grand Foyer that stopped me completely. Fifty-four metres long. Ceiling eighteen metres high, covered entirely in Paul Baudry's frescoes - allegories of music, painted between 1866 and 1874. Mirrors everywhere. Light bouncing off gilded pilasters and chandeliers Garnier designed himself. People compare it to Versailles' Hall of Mirrors. I can see why - the proportions, the mirrors, the gilt - but this felt different. More theatrical. More layered. More interested in making you feel something than simply impressing you. Your eye doesn't settle. It keeps moving - ceiling to mirrors to frescoes to marble columns to chandeliers and back again. I stood there for forty minutes. Could've stayed longer

Many people choose a fabric they love and then end up with a blind they don't.