Paris - Collège de France

The Collège de France in Paris, originally known as the Collège des Trois Langues, is one of the most celebrated academic centers of teaching and research in France. The original building, with three wings round an arcaded courtyard (designed by Chalgrin, 1778), was considerably extended in the 19th century and again in 1930.

The Collège des Trois Langues (College of the Three Languages), also known as the Collège des Lecteurs Royaux (College of the Royal Lecturers), was founded in 1530 by François I, who thus established his reputation as "father and restorer of learning". An admirer of the Italian Renaissance, he desired to create a center of learning independent of the Church in which the three languages of antiquity - Hebrew, Greek and Latin - would be studied, as in Italy, on the basis of the original texts.

The lecturers were paid by the king himself and not, as was the normal practice, by the students.

The freedom of the teaching staff from any academic constraints and the students' freedom of access to lectures without payment of any fee have been maintained down to the present day. The Collège de France, however, differs from the Sorbonne in granting no degrees, diplomas or titles. Its teaching program now extends to almost all the humanities and the natural sciences.

Among the best known professors who have taught at the Collège de France are the physicist André Ampère, the historian Jules Michelet, the writer and poet Paul Valéry, the philosopher Henri Bergson, the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the philosopher Michel Foucault and the literary critic Roland Barthes.