​The house of avant-garde French glass designer René-Jules Lalique is sure to blow you away. Built by Lalique in 1920, it has been turned into a sophisticated hotel, with six suites, designed by Lady Tina Green and Pietro Mingarelli, and a gourmet restaurant, designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta. Born in 1860, Lalique – whose maxim was “better to seek beauty than to flaunt luxury” – gained recognition as a leading protagonist of the French art nouveau movement in jewellery design, pleasing both the academic and artistic elite. His watershed moment came in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, when he chose to move into glassmaking.