In a Parisian flat overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, gallerist Jeffrey Cadayong of Rivoli Fine Art curates nine months of temporary living that teaches him about beauty in permanence and the ephemeral.

Each morning, for these past few months, Jeffrey Cadayong reaches for his phone before his coffee. Through the tall windows of the apartment, the Arc de Triomphe catches the early light, never the same twice, always worth documenting. “I cannot count the number of pictures I take of it in a day,” he shares. “What an inspiration it would be for a painter!”

While Jeffrey is not a professional painter, he is something adjacent: a gallerist. He founded Rivoli Fine Art in 2018 with the primary aim of promoting Filipino artists throughout Europe and repatriating their heritage, which had been spread around the world. For the past nine months, while his apartment undergoes renovation, he has taken up residence in a flat that has become a masterpiece of temporary living.

The French essayist Charles Baudelaire once wrote that beauty contains both eternal and circumstantial elements, the permanent and the passing. This space embodies this duality. The Arc outside these windows has commemorated French glory for two centuries, unchanging in its stone certainty. Meanwhile, the experience of it is pure circumstance, of temporary tenancy and changing light.

Although he cannot bring the view back with him, there is an understanding of how beauty accumulates when we stop trying to possess it. The apartment is curated with objects that have traveled decades, some even centuries, to arrive at this fleeting moment.

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Curating Objects In Dialogue

“I was lucky that the apartment was not furnished,” Jeffrey shares. “Nine months of one’s life have to be taken seriously after all.” It was a blank canvas but with a clear expiration date. What emerged is careful curation by someone who professionally understands how objects speak to each other across space and time.

In his previous flat, a Bulul statue sat atop a neoclassical French console. “I swear they were getting along as best friends,” he says. This philosophy of cultural conversation still guides his decorating philosophy. The influence of his professional expertise is “obvious, necessary, and inevitable,” he says, and adds: “But I don’t let it determine my universe. I do not wish to be a victim of trends.”

His supreme reference remains “the eternal taste that has marked French decorative arts and furniture for centuries, though seen through [his] own glasses.” This manifests in unexpected partnerships throughout the space. “It is important to mix, and that is what I believe makes taste,” Jeffrey reflects, adding: “When it works!”

A Tang dynasty marble statue presides over the fireplace. Nearby, a complete set of Flora de Filipinas volumes, an extremely rare collection that Jeffrey recently acquired of botanical illustrations documenting Philippine flora. There are ancient Chinese rugs anchoring a seating area with Directoire-style furniture of classic French grammatical structure.

The space relies on vintage and antique pieces that carry their own narratives, with objects weathered by time and bringing accumulated stories that transform a temporary apartment into something with deeper resonance.

Each piece, from the centuries-old rugs to the ancient ceramics, reflects the same cross-cultural sensibility that defines Jeffrey’s professional work. This domestic diplomacy reflects Jeffrey’s professional mission. Prior to founding Rivoli Fine Art, he settled in Paris over a decade ago with a special visa called compétences et talent, based upon a project to develop bilateral relations in the field of culture. The mixing within the space finds success through an intuitive understanding of how different civilizations can enhance rather than overwhelm each other.

The Arc de Triomphe As Muse

While looking for a temporary place to stay, he shares: “I jumped at the unique occasion to enjoy the view of the Arc de Triomphe!” The exclamation point is earned. After all, if beauty contains both eternal and circumstantial elements, shouldn’t we seize the circumstantial when it presents itself? Life itself is temporary, and the opportunity to wake up each morning to one of the world’s most famous monuments as your daily companion doesn’t come twice.

Every afternoon at 630 PM, there is a solemn ritual that unfolds. “Groups coming from all segments of French society and various battalions of the French army” gather at the Arc de Triomphe for the daily ritual of rekindling the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, “whatever the weather.” The flame, meant to burn without end in honor of France’s unidentified war dead, requires this daily human intervention, as even eternity needs tending.

The view offers more than just architectural beauty. It provides a front-row seat to the temporal rhythms of French life, from the daily ceremony to grand spectacles.

Jeffrey shares that the previous week brought Bastille Day, “its the most extraordinary parade, which I had the privilege to watch from my windows.” He is excited for next week’s Tour de France finale, when the world’s most famous cycling race concludes its three-week journey beneath the Arc. Even monuments to permanence become backdrops for the temporary moments that punctuate human lives.

“A pleasure of every moment!” he declares.

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Finding Beauty In Transition

“I will move forward, I don’t look back,” Jeffrey says when asked about lessons from this temporary experience, a commitment to transformation over nostalgia. His approach to this borrowed time arguably reflects a larger worldview shaped by professional nomadism and cultural bridge-building.

Since arriving in Paris a decade ago, Jeffrey has existed in the productive space between cultures. “I am definitely, and will remain, a Filipino,” he acknowledges, “but needless to say that this confrontation with this great country has been a source of renewal in many ways.”

In this temporary home, Jeffrey has embraced creative possibilities that emerge from constraint and temporality. The result feels neither Filipino nor French, but some beautiful blend that acknowledges rootedness and movement.

Soon, the movers will come for his carefully chosen pieces. The Flora de Filipinas will find new shelves, the ancient ceramics will catch a different light, and the neoclassical console will anchor some other arrangement. The Arc de Triomphe will remain exactly where Napoleon placed it, eternal and commemorative, but this particular angle of vision will dissolve into the democracy of memory.

While Jeffrey can’t take the view, he carries forward the understanding it provides: that beauty deepens precisely because we cannot possess it and that some of the most profound homes are the ones we know we must leave. Nine months of borrowed perfection can teach us a few things about permanence that a lifetime of ownership might miss. Baudelaire understood this: that beauty lives in the marriage between the eternal and the circumstantial. Jeffrey has learned to be grateful for both the eternal Arc that will outlast him and the circumstantial gift of nine months in its company. Some rooms transform us precisely because we pass through them.

The article was originally published in our September 2025 Issue

Photographs courtesy of Jeffrey Cadayong