Le lycée Louis-le-Grand à Paris : chronique d’une reconstruction différée (1841-1881)

The Lycée Louis-Le-Grand in Paris ; chronicle of a delayed reconstruction (1841-1881). This article sets out ot explain how one of the most prestigious secondary educational establishments in France, the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand, heir to the Clermont College founded by the Jesuits in 1563, had to function in dilapidated and insanitary buildings for over fifty years. Between 1841 and 1885 no fewer than fourteen rebuilding projects, signed by nine different architects, were drawn up, all of them prevented from being put into effect either by political events or by the disagreements between the two authorities on which the school depended, the State and the City of Paris. This paradoxical situation came to an endonly with the new impetus given to school building by Jules Ferry. Charles Le Cœur’s ambitious project, realised between 1885 and 1898, left precious little of the earlier buildings and marked the apogee of school architecture under the Third French Republic. The country’s leading lycée was also the most expensive one ever built.