As you ride the famous Savoleyres bubble lift out of Verbier, the Swiss ski resort that acts as a magnet to royals, tycoons and (until lately) moneyed Russians, it is possible to feast your eyes on some of Europe's most exclusive ski chalets.
The higher you get, the bigger and posher these great Alpine schlosses become until, just before you reach the snow-covered pistes, you pass the biggest and poshest of the lot: a stonking pile called Trois Couronnes — ‘three crowns'.
Spread across a trio of buildings, interlinked with what estate agents call a ‘vaulted art gallery and banqueting hall', the eight-bedroom property was billed as ‘one of the finest properties in the Alps' and valued at an astonishing £28 million when it was finished a decade ago.
It boasts two kitchens, eight bathrooms, an indoor pool — decorated with Italian mosaic and covered with a retractable glass floor — an outdoor Jacuzzi, sauna, hammam, spa and ‘relaxation area', law firm plus a cinema, glass-walled wine cellar and cigar room.
The interior designers who kitted the place out didn't do things by halves, either.
Instead, they ‘travelled from Florence and Austria to Paris and Belgium collecting antique pieces, fine art, gothic fireplaces, natural stone fountains and washbasins, a soapstone oven, old wood panelling, floors and ceilings from the 18th and 19th century, forged iron chandeliers, 19th-century elevator doors and other signature pieces'.
Karl Komarek, who this week won the licence to run the National Lottery, pictured with his wife Stepanka
In almost every room, chairs and beds are now covered with expensive fur.
On the floor of the master bedroom is a rug made from the pelt of an entire polar bear.
Meanwhile, staff include a concierge, a Michelin-star chef, a sommelier and a team of maids who not only pack the bags of departing guests but also fold their clothes in golden tissue paper.
In high season, if the owner isn't about, it rents for almost half a million pounds a week.
Chalet Trois Couronnes is, one might conclude, the sort of monument to untrammelled excess that a newly-minted lottery winner might call home.
And this week, that became quite literally the case.
On Tuesday, the British Government announced that it was handing the next licence to run our National Lottery to a 53-year-old Czech billionaire named Karel Komarek.
He, according to public records, chooses to run a significant portion of his business empire from the palatial Verbier residence.
It is one of a string of luxury piles that Komarek and 45-year-old second wife Stepanka have divided time between over recent years.
These include a stately home half an hour's drive from Prague, a hillside retreat above Lake Geneva, and Villa Lumina, a prominent mansion in Palm Beach, the celebrity enclave off the coast of Florida which he sold last year for $26.2 million (£18.8 million).
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