The City Conservatory of Paris occupies a stone building on the rue de Madrid with a heavy, carved wooden door that often stands slightly ajar. Inside, the walls vibrate with the overlapping scales of a hundred different instruments. It started in the late eighteenth century as a school to train musicians for the French military bands, but it quickly became the training ground for the greatest composers in Europe. Hector Berlioz walked these same halls, failing his entrance exams before eventually winning the top prize.
City Conservatory of Paris
cultural