École de Médecine (building)

The École de Médecine is recognizable by its long, neoclassical façade featuring a prominent screen of Ionic columns and a relief panel above the main entrance that depicts the muse of architecture presenting building plans to the god of medicine. Commissioned by King Louis XV and designed by architect Jacques Gondoin, the building was completed in seventeen eighty-six to house the Royal Academy of Surgery. Its design, including a Roman-inspired hemispherical amphitheater at the rear, was intended to reflect Enlightenment values of rationality and order.