A Day at Versailles

The Chateau de Versailles is one of the most beautiful and fascinating achievements of eighteenth-century French art. This unique book offers readers unprecedented access to this historical treasure. The world's most iconic chateau has welcomed tourists the world over, yet this handsome slipcased volume offers up the charm of a thousand and one hidden places in the chateau, its gardens, and pavilions. All were designed to surprise and delight the eye and all the senses at every turn, their ornate decoration forming an integral part of the elite lifestyle of the eighteenth century. This comprehensive volume captures the exquisite setting and inimitable ambience of Versailles and its gardens, from its intimate private spaces usually closed to the general public to the charming Petit Trianon and dairy farm created for the pure pleasure of Marie-Antoinette.

“…though this “biography” of the building takes a day-in-the-life look at life within it, Carlier also notes how drastically those days differed as the palace’s purpose changed from 1682 to the present. In addition, the book examines how these many “lives” of Versailles have been immortalized…photographer Francis Hammond clearly knows we like to gasp at grandeur, but he also cannily catches the more subtle details. The result is a tour of the palace that takes the reader not merely through its spaces, but also its times.” -Metrosource

Yves Carlier is a writer and curator specializing in sixteenth- to nineteenth-century French decorative arts and design. Francis Hammond is a renowned lifestyle photographer.