Focusing on some of the most photogenic areas of Europe and the United States, this growing series of books is most notable for its magnificent photographs of the lovely villages and towns of the areas covered in each volume.

With literary and historical references, these coffeetable books include appendices listing the most important sites, markets, festivals, hotels, and restaurants.

Dominique Reperant

Here are fifty of the most beautiful villages in a country famous for its rural architecture and small towns. They have been selected for their situation in a picturesque landscape, for their authentic state of preservation and conservation, and for their sheer beauty and ambiance. Reperant's photographs together with detailed descriptive texts and regional maps they make this a wonderful book for those who love France and the French countryside.

James Bentley, Photographs by Hugh Palmer

Brittany is distinct from the rest of France: a place of dramatic contrasts - jagged coastlines, fertile plains and wild moors. The thick granite walls of Brittany’s traditional houses are the result of savage Atlantic storms, though the sea also provides the succulent seafood which make any visit to Brittany a gastronomic delight. The people of this area have retained their Celtic culture and heritage; their ancestors built the many standing stones and passed on ancient myths and customs.

Brittany's vigorous and varied village life and architecture are captured in Bentley's perceptive commentaries and Palmer's photographs. Complete with a traveller's guide, The Most Beautiful Villages of Brittany offers an evocative portrayal of the coastal and inland communities of this mysterious and resilient land.

James Bentley, Photographs by Hugh Palmer

Synonymous with fine wine, elegant cuisine, and good living, Burgundy is also a land of great architecture and appealing villages. The variety, celebrated here by Bentley and Palmer, is nowhere better suggested than in the journey from north to south, from villages of black-slate roofs to those where red and ochre tiles announce the Midi. Burgundy's fascinating history and present-day devotion to the fine arts and crafts of living well are justly celebrated, and its villages make this land one of the most enchanting in the western world.

James Bentley, Photographs by Hugh Palmer

Often known by its more strictly French name of Périgord, the Dordogne offers splendid scenery, exquisite food and wine, the finest examples of prehistoric art, and some of the most enchanting villages of France -- celebrated here in wonderful color photographs and evocative decoration. This presentation of Dordogne's small towns and villages demonstrate the qualities that attract so many thousands of visitors, year in and year out.

James Bentley, Photographs by Hugh Palmer

Usually associated with splendid Renaissance châteaux and historical monuments, the Loire valley is in fact a place of even greater interest than the image of popular perception. The Loire River is the longest in France and passes through a succession of landscapes, many of them of a richness that proves this is truly "the garden of France." And there is variety too, reflected in the buildings and settings of the beautiful villages so stunningly illustrated in this book. Over thirty villages of the Loire valley are described and illustrated in this book, which is completed by special sections on wine and food and abbeys and churches.

Hugh Palmer

Normandy is a vast region of open country and woodland. It is also a coastal land of towering cliffs and sandy beaches, imbued with a poignant sense of momentous historical events and punctuated by delicious villages -- some fashionable resorts, others still working fishing communities, the most beautiful of which are illustrated in this book. Normandy is also famous for the good things in life: a varied vernacular architecture, a rich cuisine derived from local produce, and strong associations with the arts. Claude Monet created his famous garden in the village of Giverny in the valley of the Seine. In addition to the accounts of over thirty of the most picturesque villages of Normandy, this beautiful book also includes special sections on the churches, châteaux, harbors, and coastline. This book is completed by a guide to the most important sights, markets, hotels, and restaurants. 200 color illustrations and photographs.

Provence is a land apart, a territory of outstanding beauty and distinction that has exercised a fascination for outsiders since earliest times. The Greeks, the Romans, the barbarians of the North and the Moors have all left their traces in its villages and small towns, from the hills and mountains of the Lubéron, and the vine-growing country of the Var, to the villages perchés of the Alpes-Maritimes.

These surveys include specially compiled listings of hotels, restaurants and sights, creating a magnificent and very useable tribute to the beauty and spirit of a place which continues to entrance visitors to this day.

Helena Attlee, Photographs by Alex Ramsay

The most beautiful of the abundant and entrancing country towns of Provence are presented here in Ramsay’s evocative photographs and Attlee’s perceptive commentaries.

Michael Jacobs, Photographs by Hugh Palmer

In brilliant sunlight falling across the tightly grouped terracotta roofs of hill villages, or in the velvety shade beneath great plane trees in an ancient square – the country of Marcel Pagnol and Jean de Florette comes alive here -- its architecture, landscape and people.

The book opens with the villages of the Vaucluse and the Bouches-du-Rhône, the west of the province, and moves east to the Var and eventually to the mountains of the Alpine départements.