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Author: Georges Poisson
Publisher: Casa Editrice Bonechi
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 212
ISBN-13: 9788880296515
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDiscover the rich history and culture of some of the world¿s most influential historical places with these highly illustrated books, packed with informative and enlightening descriptions and information
Author: Alain Baraton
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Published: 2014-02-11
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 0847842703
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn “eccentric and charming” love letter to Versailles Palace and its storied grounds, by the man who knows them best—for gardening lovers and Francophiles (New York Times) Tour Versailles’ 2,100 acres as its gardener-in-chief describes its fascinating history and his 40 years of living and working in the gardens. In Alain Baraton’s Versailles, every grove tells a story. As the gardener-in-chief, Baraton lives on its grounds, and since 1982 he has devoted his life to the gardens, orchards, and fields that were loved by France’s kings and queens as much as the palace itself. His memoir captures the essence of the connection between gardeners and the earth they tend, no matter how humble or grand. With the charm of a natural storyteller, Baraton weaves his own path as a gardener with the life of the Versailles grounds, and his role overseeing its team of 80 gardeners tending to 350,000 trees and 30 miles of walkways across 2,100 acres. He richly evokes this legendary place and the history it has witnessed but also its quieter side that he feels privileged to know: The same gardens that hosted the lavish lawn parties of Louis XIV and the momentous meeting between Marie Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan remain enchanted—private places where visitors try to get themselves locked in at night, lovers go looking for secluded hideaways, and elegant grandmothers secretly make cuttings to take back to their own gardens. A tremendous bestseller in France, The Gardener of Versailles gives an unprecedentedly intimate view of one of the grandest places on earth.
Author: Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Published: 2018-04-16
Total Pages: 396
ISBN-13: 1588396223
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat was it like to visit one of the most magnificent courts of Europe? Based on a wealth of contemporary documents and surviving works of art, this lavish book explores the experiences of those who swarmed the palace and grounds of Versailles when it was the seat of the French monarchy. Engaging essays describe methods of transportation, the elaborate codes of dress and etiquette, precious diplomatic gifts, royal audiences, and tours of the palace and gardens. Also presented are the many types of visitors and guests who eagerly made their way to this center of power and culture, including day-trippers and Grand Tourists, European diplomats, overseas ambassadors, incognito travelers, and Americans. Through paintings and portraits, furniture, costumes and uniforms, arms and armor, guidebooks, and other works of art, Visitors to Versailles illuminates what travelers encountered at court and what impressions, gifts, and souvenirs they took home with them. In bringing to life their experiences, this sumptuously illustrated volume reminds us why Versailles has enchanted generations of visitors from the ancien régime to the present day.
Author: Margaret MacMillan
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-12-18
Total Pages: 626
ISBN-13: 0307432963
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel—whose troubles haunt us still. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize • Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize • Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Between January and July 1919, after “the war to end all wars,” men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam. For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews. The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War. Praise for Paris 1919 “It’s easy to get into a war, but ending it is a more arduous matter. It was never more so than in 1919, at the Paris Conference. . . . This is an enthralling book: detailed, fair, unfailingly lively. Professor MacMillan has that essential quality of the historian, a narrative gift.” —Allan Massie, The Daily Telegraph (London)
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Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Published: 2018-02-06
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 2080203371
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis comprehensive monograph on Versailles offers unprecedented access to the château and grounds of one of France’s most significant and legendary historical landmarks. For this book, Versailles granted the photographer carte blanche access to the palace and its grounds. This new edition includes previously unseen material on the recently restored Cabinet de la Meridienne (Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir), the Salon d’Aurore, and new, up-close and in-situ details of objects that are not part of the general public circuit. Also included are historical memoirs and letters that provide fascinating insight into life at the palace. From the most renowned rooms to the gardens, Versailles is a theater of unrivaled splendor that continues to capture the hearts of visitors and aficionados of France from around the world.
Author: Sally Christie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2015-09
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 1501102966
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCourt intriguers are beginning to sense that young King Louis XV, after seven years of marriage, is tiring of his Polish wife. The race is on to find a mistress for the royal bed. The King's scheming ministers push Louise, the eldest of the aristocratic Nesle sisters, into the arms of the King. Over the following decade, of the five Nesle sisters-- Louise, Pauline, Diane, Hortense, and Marie-Anne-- four will become mistresses to King Louis XV. All will conspire, betray, suffer, and triumph in a desperate fight for both love and power.
Author: Paul French
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
Published: 2014-07-23
Total Pages: 81
ISBN-13: 0143800361
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAt the conclusion of 'the war to end war', the victorious powers set about redesigning the world map at the Paris Peace Conference. For China, Versailles presented an opportunity to regain territory lost to Japan at the start of the war. Yet, despite early encouragement from the world's superpowers, the country was to be severely disappointed. In this First World War China Special Paul French explores China's betrayal by the West, the charismatic advocates it sent to the conference and the hugely significant May Fourth Movement that resulted from the treaty.
Author: Cara Black
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2022-03-15
Total Pages: 361
ISBN-13: 1641290447
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis riveting 20th installment entangles Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft and terrorist threats in Paris's 15th arrondissement. November 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory—and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails. Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove this, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s. As Aimée scours the streets of the 15th arrondissement trying to learn the truth, she has to ask herself if she should succumb to pressure from Chloe’s biological father and move them out to his farm in Brittany. But could Aimée Leduc ever leave Paris?
Author: Tony Spawforth
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Published: 2010-03-16
Total Pages: 407
ISBN-13: 1429928786
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“An illuminating portrait” of the palace―its architecture, its scandals, its politics, and its role in France’s tumultuous history (The New York Times Book Review). The story of Versailles is one of historical drama, under the last three kings of France's old regime, mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts, all in an iconic home for the French arts. The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today. Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Tony Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King’s construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a “perpetual house party” of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789. Includes photographs “Animates the palace that was home to the most charismatic monarchy in Europe for a century, until the French Revolution . . . well-researched and highly engrossing.” —Publishers Weekly
Author: Sally Christie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2016-04-05
Total Pages: 448
ISBN-13: 1501102990
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"And you thought sisters were a thing to fear. In this scandalous follow-up to Sally Christie's clever and absorbing debut, we meet none other than the Marquise de Pompadour, one of the greatest beauties of her generation and the first bourgeois mistress ever to grace the hallowed halls of Versailles. I write this before her blood is even cold. She is dead, suddenly, from a high fever. The King is inconsolable, but the way is now clear. The way is now clear. The year is 1745. Marie-Anne, the youngest of the infamous Nesle sisters and King Louis XV's most beloved mistress, is gone, making room for the next Royal Favorite. Enter Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, a stunningly beautiful girl from the middle classes. Fifteen years prior, a fortune teller had mapped out young Jeanne's destiny: she would become the lover of a king and the most powerful woman in the land. Eventually connections, luck, and a little scheming pave her way to Versailles and into the King's arms. All too soon, conniving politicians and hopeful beauties seek to replace the bourgeois interloper with a more suitable mistress. As Jeanne, now the Marquise de Pompadour, takes on her many rivals--including a lustful lady-in-waiting; a precocious fourteen-year-old prostitute, and even a cousin of the notorious Nesle sisters--she helps the king give himself over to a life of luxury and depravity. Around them, war rages, discontent grows, and France inches ever closer to the Revolution. Enigmatic beauty, social climber, actress, trendsetter, patron of the arts, spendthrift, whoremonger, friend, lover, foe. History books may say many things about the famous Marquise de Pompadour, but one thing is clear: for almost twenty years, she ruled France and the King's heart. Told in Christie's witty and modern style, this second book in the Mistresses of Versailles trilogy will delight and entrance fans as it once again brings to life the world of eighteenth century Versailles in all its pride, pestilence and glory"--
