We performed extensive Monte Carlo simulations of a hard-sphere f.c.c.
crystal near the melting transition in order to examine the validity
of the widely used Gaussian ansatz for the density distribution in sol
ids. Anisotropic deviations in the shape of the density distribution f
rom the Gaussian form are found to be of the order of 10%. Popular liq
uid-based density functional approximations are shown to fail in predi
cting the magnitude and the qualitative features of the anisotropy in
the crystalline density distributions.