La demeure en France. L’art de vivre heureux

There are other means than partying to be happy. Some choose to travel, but others prefer being home. As the poet du Bellay wrote, our home is our province, and so much more. He would have liked this book. Fie hundred years after his demise, he could still find in it traces form his time in the castle sin the middle of wine countries, manors and country homes with stone staircases and tiled roofs, overlooking gardens with ponds, orchards and pigeon lofts that have resisted the outrages of time, like the Town Hall of Vieux Raisin in Toulouse. But he would also have been pleasantly surprised by the generations who followed him and who knew how to renew the art of the adobe. This book invites us to long walk, from Abbadia to Yvoire, going through Belcastel, Donjeux, Lignières or La Palice. It is richly illustrated (keep your glasses as the detailed notices are rather small), scanning through typologies (dining rooms, book cases as well as iceboxes, ovens, plants and gazebos) and materials (slate, volcanic rock, varnished tile and offers a trip through France that is more amusing than the Tour of France by two children written by G. Bruno. Though the index is complete, we regret the maps do not synthesize all the sites presented, a true array of the French art of living.

• La demeure en France. L’art de vivre heureux, collective work, published by l’Esplanade, 2019, 384 p., €39.