359 Beacon Street, Unit 2, Back BayBoston, MA 02116Price: $4,250,000

It took a quarter century to build, and most of it crossed the ocean by ship to get here. This is a 3-bedroom brownstone: 2,867 SF over three levels, three full bathrooms, and the option to add an extra half bath on the upper level. At the garden level, a private walled courtyard enclosed on all four sides. The rooftops above the wall are the only thing that tells you you're in Boston, not Europe. It is paved in French limestone hand-split in the 1700s, with a masonry fireplace, a grill, a real flue and a real damper built into the wall. If you want a wood fire outdoors in Back Bay, this is the only one. One off-street parking space opens straight onto the courtyard and the garden level. You park in Boston, walk down into the south of France and then directly into your private studio. Inside, the difference is something you feel before you can name it. A French farmhouse kitchen with a La Cornue range and limestone counters cut by hand. Quarter-sawn white oak underfoot, the most expensive way to cut a log. Hardware cast by P.E. Guerin, in business for over 150 years. THG Paris fittings and heated European towel racks in the bathrooms. Fireplaces throughout, two of them carved from onyx, one in a library with Grange bookcases and a rolling ladder. The owners bought a duplex in 1999 and two more floors in 2003, adding one of them to make the triplex. In between came a decade of stonemasons and blacksmiths, and orders placed in France, England and Italy. The same standard is held everywhere. Even the linen closet is floored in imported Italian ebony. A home like this cannot be built again. It can only be bought.