The Memory Palace

A brilliant, ambitious follow-up to The Secret Lives of Buildings, in which Hollis turns his focus from the great architectural constructions of the past to the now-vanished chambers they once contained.

The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. one day, the structures will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will persist. In this dazzling work of imaginative reconstruction, edward Hollis takes us to the sites of great abodes now lost to history and piecing together the fragments that remain, re-creates their vanished chambers.

From Rome’s palatine to the old palace of Westminster and the petit Trianon at Versailles, from the sets of MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal palace and the author’s own grandmother’s sitting room, The Memory Palace is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the alluring people who lived in them.