Collège Stanislas de Paris

The gray stone walls of the Collège Stanislas stretch along the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, punctuated by a massive, austere entrance gate. Founded in eighteen oh four, this school began in a small apartment before expanding into this sprawling complex of classrooms and chapels. Its students spent their days under a strict academic discipline that produced generations of French leaders and thinkers. When the building burned during the turmoil of the nineteenth century, the community rebuilt it to endure, leaving the stone fortress you see today.