With an insightful text by Bertrand Lemoine and more than 170 photographs and drawings, most in full color, this book captures France's rich and diverse architecture from a century known for its opulence, eclecticism, and innovation. The Napoleonic era gave rise to Neoclassical monuments that recalled Imperial Rome.

The grand projects of the Second Empire created much of the Paris we know today: for example, Charles Garnier's Iavish Opera House, the expanded Louvre, and the stately boulevards of Baron Haussmann's city plan. New towns, suburbs, and resorts were developed to accommodate a growing middle-class population, encouraging a demand for houses in a range of fanciful styles based on vernacular sources - Mediterranean villas, Norman castles, and Alpine chalets - and displaying picturesque elements such as turrets, bow windows, and decorative brick and terra-cotta decoration.

And the latter half of the century produced many milestones of early modern architecture such as the masterful Neo-Grec libraries of Henri Labrouste, the dramatic iron structures of Gustave Eiffel, and the flamboyant Art Nouveau designs of Hector Guimard.