Ministère de l'Education Nationale

The Hotel de Rochechouart sits on the Rue de Grenelle, marked by a massive, weathered stone gateway topped with intricate eighteenth-century carvings. This residence originally belonged to a family of the minor nobility, but it eventually became the headquarters for the French Ministry of National Education. In nineteen thirty-six, the minister Jean Zay famously stood in these halls to push through a law extending compulsory schooling for all children until age fourteen, forever changing the trajectory of the French public school system.