The book consists of 312 pages, which are filled with sections and floor plans from numerous buildings in France. The first page offers the title of the book French architecture, or collection of plans, elevations, layouts and profiles of royal houses (original: l´architecture françoise, ou recueil des plans, élévations, coupes et profiles des maisons royalles). Furthermore, it shows the name and address of the author, the publisher, and the year it came out. The writing of the title is in printed capital letters, whereas a small description of the book seems to have been handwritten. The publishing year uses roman numbers. A table of content is situated at the 4th last page of the book. It is also written in cursive letters and shows the page number of each house described in the previous pages. To find the corresponding number to the topic, a small dotted line connects the two. All pages to the right are numbered on the top right of the paper. One page consists of a double side of paper.
The pages solely consist of drawings from the buildings chosen by the author. Most of them are surrounded by a frame. They can consist of only a large and a small black line or even vastly decorated frames on more important buildings. The author creates a sense of hierarchy with the frames he uses. There is no use of colour in the entire book. Each page has a subtitle, written in italics and explaining the section chosen for the building.
Some of the pages are folded and can be opened by the reader to have a clearer view on a floor plan for example. All illustrations offer a great amount of detail, which is made possible by the size of the book. The common use could be described as a book of reference or a handbook for architects and historians. It is a collection of various noble and public houses in France, with the most important, like the Louvre, at the beginning of the book and smaller buildings towards the end.