Collège des Quatre-Nations

The Collège des Quatre Nations (French, German school of the four nations ) or the Collège Mazarin, is a baroque building on the Rive Gauche mentioned, the Louvre opposite bank of the Seine, in the center of Paris ( 6th arrondissement ). It was planned and built in 1662-1688 by the French architect Louis Le Vau as a school for young nobles. Today it serves the Institut de France and the Bibliothèque Mazarine as seat

The establishment of the Collèges goes back to a last will of the French cardinal and minister of Italian descent Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), in which were laid down measures to be taken to annually about sixty young noblemen from after the Peace of Münster in 1648 and the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 had fallen to France areas Artois, Alsace, Roussillon Pignerol and free form in a knight's academy and educate to loyal subjects of the French king. Of these four areas or nations, the name of the building is derived. In accordance with the last will of the Cardinal, the students were taught in the following composition: from Flanders, Artois and Luxembourg came together twenty, fifteen, depending from the Alsace and the Pignerol and ten from the Roussillon.

In 1691, was housed in the east wing of the school Mazarin's private library and made ​​available to the public.

According to His desire was the Cardinal his final resting place in the chapel of the Collège des Quatre Nations.

Since 1805, the building, at the instigation of Napoleon, home of the 1795 founded, previously residing in the Louvre Institut de France, there also administers the Bibliothèque Mazarine public the Bibliothèque de l'Institut. The use of the latter, however, is reserved for members of the five represented in-house academies and recognized researchers.

Student

Among the pupils of Collèges included the mathematician, physicist and philosopher Jean le Rond d' Alembert -Baptiste, the painter Jacques -Louis David, the author and encyclopedist Charles- Étienne Pesselier, the critic Julien Louis Geoffroy and the chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier.