Your Visit to Versailles [French]

by Simone Hoog

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: French
• ISBN: 2854951352
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Art Lys
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 9.2" x 12.1"

Customer Reviews

Stunning photography combined with valuable commentary!

"Visit Versailles" is an absolutely stunning photographic essay; it's a concise description in text of a world class living museum that will take any visitor's breath away with its splendor; it's a brief time-line history of the French royal families and aristocracy from 1624 until 1837 when Queen Victoria ascended to the British throne; it's a fascinating description of daily private and public life as it would have been conducted by the palace's residents in its heyday; it's a satisfying (albeit somewhat cursory) overview of the enormous quantity of art and frescoes that currently adorn the walls of the Versailles Chateau; and, finally, "Visit Versailles" is a room-by-room and path by path walkthrough of the entire palace and its grounds - the State Apartments, the Private Apartments, the Apartments of the Princes, the Chapel and the Opera, the History Galleries, the walks in the gardens and the Trianon Châteaux. Oh yeah ... of course, it's a fabulous souvenir of a not-to-be-missed tourist attraction of a visit to Paris. Like any other attraction of this magnitude - the Louvre, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace - it really is almost impossible to do the venue any justice with a single visit even if one undertakes to spend an entire day working at it in detail. A comprehensive souvenir book like this is really the only way to allow yourself to go back over and over and over again, enjoying it, savoring it and, indeed, learning about it in greater detail with every return visit. Béatrix Saule, Versaille's head curator, and Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel, its Director General, have prepared a beautiful book that faithfully reproduces Versailles. With the benefit of historical hindsight, I'll add the unsolicited observation that Versailles is an almost overwhelming example of royalty's ostentatious self-indulgence and overpowering sense of personal entitlement. Little wonder the noses of the 18th century French citizens and citizenesses were so badly out of joint! This book is gorgeous. Highly recommended! Paul Weiss