The most beautiful villages of France

"Here is a visual celebration of France's most beautiful and perfectly preserved medieval villages. Spectacular color photographs capture their regional ambience and special character, while detailed texts explain the foundation of each village and the growth of the community. The demands of defense and trade interwine, from the walled bastides of the southwest with their great market squares, to the hilltop refuges of the Mediterranean, precariously perched and truned towards the sun. Each village is a harmonious marriage of architecture and landscape: the ancient timber buildings of Saint-Veran are surrounded by alpine forests; the startlingly rosy village of Collanges-la-Rouge is named after the local red sandstone of which it is made. Here too are Mont-Saint-Michel, Vezelay and conques, where settlements cluster around majestic monuments from the Middle Ages." -- inside cover.