Coffee table books appear to be vanity items – the finishing piece to add to any contemporary living room – but these beautifully bound objects serve the two-fold function of inciting curiosity (both yours and your dinner party guests) and flourishing your apartment with personality. 

All the way back in 1580, the idea of a book made solely for the coffee table cropped up in French philosopher’s essay Upon Some Verses of Virgil, wherein he writes: “I am vexed that my essays only serve the ladies for a common movable, a book to lay in the parlor window.” But however it may have been perceived then, these heavyweight, decorative books are now full of literary inspiration as well as looking wonderful for any room space. 

Below, find books on travel, music, and art that will fit aesthetically on your coffee table.

Vogue on Location: People, Places, Portraits

A coffee-table book for the fashion historian at heart, this art book features prints of far-flung travels from the legendary lens of photographers like Annie Leibowitz, Peter Lindbergh, and Irving Penn. Alongside stunning visuals, Vogue on Location chronicles the voyages its editors have taken to places such as Bali, Iran, and Morocco in search for stories that inspire fantasy and flight.

Images by Simon Porte Jacquemus

Images, shot by Jacquemus entirely on his iPhone, began with paring back 85,000 images to a sizable 321 photos on the everyday poetry of life. Throughout it, there’s a familiar aesthetic that fans of the French designer may already come to know – of simple, pastoral pleasures and plenty of sunsets – but Jacquemus maintains that his second photobook is not so much about fashion but finding a way to share the values that have imbued his eponymous label and life at large.

Art Life by Sig Bergamin

Take a tour of Sig Bergamin’s twelve most marvellous interiors, from Brazil to Portugal, that dream up ‘fantasy [taking] body in a well-mounted house’. Luxury book publisher Assouline‘s Art Life, with over 300 pages of gorgeous visuals, looks at what makes the Brazilian designer so revered in the world of commercial and residential design – namely his eclectic vision and penchant for rooms with rich colours and materials.

Great Escapes by Angelika Taschen

In this wondrously illustrated USA edition of Taschen’s Great Escapes series, publishing blue blood Angelika Taschen brings the genre of hotel guides to life for you to appoint your next American destination. The 360-page book travels across Napa Valley, to New Mexico and the coast of Maine, visiting abodes from the whimsically cosy to acres-spanning hotels that have been graced with the stays of famed literary giants and celebrities.