Paris-Sorbonne University

The Sorbonne displays a wide, gray stone facade on the Rue des Écoles, capped by a dome that sits above the seventeenth-century chapel. Founded in twelve fifty-seven, the college served as a humble hostel for theology students before Cardinal Richelieu transformed it into a grand center for scholars. During the riots of May nineteen sixty-eight, student barricades clogged these narrow streets, and the university shut its doors entirely to prevent the police from entering a space that had long enjoyed a tradition of autonomy.