The Val-de-Grâce was a military hospital located at 74 boulevard de Port-Royal in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was closed as a hospital in 2016.
The Archives Nationales , also known as the French Archives or the National Archives, preserve France's official archives apart from the archives of the Ministry of the Armies and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as these two ministries have their own archive services, the Defence Historical Service and Diplomatic Archives respectively. The Archives Nationales have one of the largest and most important archival collections in the world, a testimony to the very ancient nature of the French state which has been in existence for more than twelve centuries already.
The Archives Nationales were created at the time of the French Revolution in 1790, but it was a state decree of 1794 that made it mandatory to centralise all the pre-French Revolution private and public archives seized by the revolutionaries, completed by a law passed in 1796 which created departmental archives in the départements of France to alleviate the burden on the Archives Nationales in Paris, thus creating the collections of the French archives as we know them today. In 1800 the Archives Nationales became an autonomous body of the French state. Today, they contain about 406 km. of documents , an enormous mass of documents growing every year. The original documents stored by the Archives Nationales range from AD 625 to today.
The Archives Nationales are under the authority of the French Archives Administration in the Ministry of Culture. The Archives of France also manage the 100 departmental archives located in the préfectures of each of the 100 départements of France, as well as various other local archives. These departmental and local archives contain all the archives from the decentralised branches of the French state, as well as all the archives of the pre-French Revolution provincial and local institutions seized by the revolutionaries . Thus, in addition to the 252 miles of documents kept by the Archives Nationales, at least 1,753 miles of documents are kept in the departmental and local archives, in particular the church records and notarial records used by genealogists.
Solesmes Abbey or St. Peter's Abbey, Solesmes is a Benedictine monastery in Solesmes , famous as the source of the restoration of Benedictine monastic life in the country under Dom Prosper Guéranger after the French Revolution. The current abbot is the Right Reverend Dom Philippe Dupont, O.S.B.
The Recueil d'Arras is a mid 16th century manuscript. Tentatively attributed to the Netherlandish artist Jacques Le Boucq, it comprises 293 paper folios, of which nrs 5–177, 179–293 and 271 contain 289 copies of drawn portraits of named historical people.
The book is named after the city of its current location, Arras in Northern France. It is not known who commissioned the book, or for what purpose. None the less, it is of significant historical interest, given it reproduces many near contemporary depictions of known political, courtly, or artistic persons.
Sainte-Geneviève Library is a public and university library located at 10, place du Panthéon, across the square from the Panthéon, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. It is based on the collection of the Abbey of St Genevieve, which was founded in the 6th century by Clovis I, the King of the Franks. The collection of the library was saved from destruction during the French Revolution. A new reading room for the library, with an innovative iron frame supporting the roof, was built between 1838 and 1851 by architect Henri Labrouste. The library contains around 2 million documents, and currently is the principal inter-university library for the different branches of University of Paris, and is also open to the public.
The Caserne d'Artois or the Quartier d'Artois is a military installation in the city of Versailles, France. Some of its façades are listed as Historical Monuments.
Chartres Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres , is a Roman Catholic church in Chartres, France, about 80 km southwest of Paris and is the seat of the Bishop of Chartres. Mostly constructed between 1194 and 1220, it stands at the site of at least five cathedrals that have occupied the site since the Diocese of Chartres was formed as an episcopal see in the 4th century. It is in the High Gothic and Romanesque styles.
The cathedral is designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which calls it "the high point of French Gothic art" and a "masterpiece".The cathedral is well-preserved for its age: the majority of the original stained glass windows survive intact, while the architecture has seen only minor changes since the early 13th century. The building's exterior is dominated by heavy flying buttresses which allowed the architects to increase the window size significantly, while the west end is dominated by two contrasting spires – a 105-metre plain pyramid completed around 1160 and a 113-metre early 16th-century Flamboyant spire on top of an older tower. Equally notable are the three great façades, each adorned with hundreds of sculpted figures illustrating key theological themes and narratives.
Since at least the 12th century the cathedral has been an important destination for travellers. It remains so to the present, attracting large numbers of Christian pilgrims, many of whom come to venerate its famous relic, the Sancta Camisa, said to be the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary at Christ's birth, as well as large numbers of secular tourists who come to admire the cathedral's architecture and historical merit.
Le Mans Cathedral is a Catholic church situated in Le Mans, France. The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Julian of Le Mans, the city's first bishop, who established Christianity in the area around the beginning of the 4th century. Its construction dated from the 6th through the 14th century, and it features many French Gothic elements.
The cathedral, which combines a Romanesque nave and a High Gothic choir, is notable for its rich collection of stained glass and the spectacular bifurcating flying buttresses at its eastern end.
