An abandoned Paris metro station, fire stations where tankers from the last century wait in vain for the next alert, a prison with faded pastel walls, cloisters overgrown with vegetation, a mansion where dust covers the keys of a mute piano, fighter planes asleep on the runway of an airfield, a crypt plunged into eternal silence...

The extraordinary wealth of France’s heritage, which can easily be admired in museums and other prestigious monuments, is not limited to these national treasures. Across the country, many witnesses to a bygone era are falling into oblivion, taking with them the vestiges of a past that is just as fascinating as the one carefully safeguarded behind glass. That’s what this superb photographic report is all about: beauty and grandeur never disappear.