After the sale of Hubert de Givenchy’s hotel collections, we thought that Paris would never again deliver such a level of wonder. We are reassured. These days, Sotheby’s has dispatched the collection of the Hôtel Lambert in Paris, offering a certain idea of France. Ideally located at the tip of the Ile Saint Louis, the building signed by Le Vaux dates back to 1640 and was restored lavishly by its previous owner, who is none other than a member of Qatar’s ruling family, the Al Thani. A fine collector, he has turned the place into a real museum where the smallest knick-knack is a piece of history and contains the unique know-how of a past era. Voltaire, Balzac and Montesquieu, among many others, were guests of the building which, under the Rothschilds, hosted some of the most fabulous parties of the 1970s.