Couvent des Récollets de Paris

The Couvent des Récollets began its life in the early seventeenth century, when King Henry the Fourth granted a group of Franciscan friars permission to build a friary here on land donated by his personal tapestry maker, Jacques Cottard. These monks were part of an order known for their strict, self-sufficient lifestyle, and they maintained a famous library on the site for generations before the French Revolution forced them out. The peaceful, cloistered environment you see today is a sharp contrast to the site's intense later years, when the original gardens were carved away to create what is now the public Villemin Garden.