Conference venue
The conference venue is located in the center of Paris (Quartier Saint-Victor, the 5th district of Paris), in the Pierre et Marie Curie Campus of Sorbonne University. At the Place Jussieu, the Pierre and Marie Curie campus houses the majority of the laboratories and classrooms used by the Faculty of Sciences, in addition to libraries and student-dedicated spaces. With the 90-meter-high Zamansky Tower at its heart, this campus alone covers an area of 400,000 square meters.
The roots of Sorbonne University trace back to the medieval University of Paris. Founded in the mid-12th century, it quickly achieved the stature and prestige that have remained undiminished ever since. The Collège de la Sorbonne, officially founded in 1257, underwent a substantial overhaul in 1885, and then the May 1968 protests brought about the decision to divide the institution into 13 autonomous universities. Among these are Université Paris-Sorbonne and Université Pierre et Marie Curie, now reunited.
The site of La Sorbonne includes, among other things, a chapel commissioned by Richelieu in the 17th century and endowed with a superb Baroque façade, as well as numerous salons, all classified as historical monuments. Over the last decade, numerous sites of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities have undergone renovation and redevelopment projects, in particular the completely-rebuilt Clignancourt location. The Pierre and Marie Curie campus has also benefitted from a wide-ranging renovation project that lasted more than 20 years and was completed in 2016.
The architect Albert’s modular “Grill” design, so characteristic of this location, has now been modified to meet the needs of research, academics, and student life in a contemporary international university setting. Students, faculty and staff can now enjoy a campus with lush greenery that’s open to the city.
Sorbonne University also possesses a top-tier scientific heritage. Each faculty has its own treasures and archives: papyri that are thousands of years old are conserved at the Institute of Papyrology; the most important paleontological collection in France after the Louvre; one of the oldest mineral collections in France; and a zoological collection like nothing else in Paris. Finally, the remarkable collections of the Charcot Library preserve the first works of neurology dating back to the 19th century.
To reach the conference venue from any place in Paris, we suggest to use public transportation. General information about public transportation in Paris is available on the website of the RATP. The closest Metro station to the conference venue is Jussieu (lines 7 and 10).
