Nested between the Parc Monsouris and the Boulevard Péréphique, at the very southern end of the 14ieme arrondissement, lies the absolute apotheosis of one vision of international education. And that is the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris (CIUP).

CIUP is not a university in and of itself. It is, rather, a set of student residences which serves universities and Grandes écoles and other institutions like Sciences Po across the entire city. The history is a little bit complicated because until 1968 there was just one “university” in Paris, with lots of campuses and institutes spread around the place. Then there were twelve. Now there are…well, it’s hard to say given the pace of mergers, and the weird ways in which some universities are both in and outside of these mergers, but let’s say ten, plus a whole truckload of private universities, mainly in fields like management.

And let’s just say it out loud: this place is fabulous. Something like 6,000 students are housed here in 43 different residences. There are parks. There are tennis courts, a dance hall, a dojo, two stadiums (one for soccer, one for rugby and a wonderful central “Maison Internationale,” a sort of scale replica of Fontainebleau which houses a theatre, and many other multi-purposes spaces which permit, among other things, a thriving music scene.

It’s mostly for international students, who are housed by nationality. The Maison Canadienne, for instance, was actually one of the first houses to open on the campus, houses something like 150 students at a time. Loads of countries have their own place on campus, most of them built between the 1930s and the 1950s: the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Cambodia, Greece, the UK, India…the list goes on. Most of them have at least some “indigenous” architectural features (though Mexico’s is a pure 1950s international style which is kind of jaw-dropping.

There are also a couple of more recent additions, like the stunning Algerian house.

The renovation of what used to be Iran House is not done but boy howdy this is a neat building.

(You can also book architectural tours here, which includes work by Le Corbusier and Willem Marinus Dudok.)

In an age where the world is full of stories of international students living in terrible, cramped conditions, it seems kind of jaw-dropping that international students could have access to such beautiful quarters. Must be crazy expensive, right? Well, no. You can check out the Maison Canadienne’s rates here, and I’m pretty sure they are about what you’d pay without a food plan at most Canadian residences (less in many cases).

How is this possible? Three things: World War I, Philanthropy, and Empire.

WWI for two reasons. First, because after the war there was a lot of effort put into the notion that the World could learn from the tragedy and become more unified through—among other things— greater cultural exchange. It’s the same impulse that led to the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand pact, and indeed, as we discussed last fall, The Floating University. It animated a lot of French politicians in the 1920s, one of whom in particular—André Honorat (Minister of Public Instruction for half a second in one of the Third Republic’s innumerable governments and later Rector of the University of Paris)—decided to make it his mission to create a spot for French and international students to live.

Second, because the land on which the site was built was vacated by the military in the 1920s. From the 1830s onwards it was part of what was known as the “Enceinte de Thiers” a (kind of) defensive wall around Paris named after the long-standing War Minister and later President (after the Commune, which he brutally suppressed), Adolphe Thiers. The killing fields of the western front and the eventual emergence of tank-based warfare put paid to the idea that defensive structures of the nature were in any way militarily useful and so—voila! Land for a philanthropic project!

And philanthropic it was. A lot of big names donated money to get this off the ground. Rockefeller ponied up for both the Maison Internationale and for the US dormitory. Maison des étudiants canadiens was paid for by Joseph-Marcellin Wilson (also a big donor to Université de Montréal and College Stanislas in Outremont), and various other big donors came forward to sponsor various buildings. If you were rich and wanted to project an image that was politically cosmopolitan, there was probably no better way to do it in the 1920s and 1930s than to sign up to a consciously transnational project that had Rockefeller-level star power. What this meant was that the burden on the state of this project was minimal, apart from the land donation.

But make no mistake about it: despite all the international donations, this was (IMHO) very much a state project. An Imperial one, even. You don’t hand out this kind of land and manage this kind of project unless you are an Imperial State, aiming to project national glory. You definitely don’t arrange housing by nationality unless you have a vision of the world at which you are the centre. There are not, so far as I know, houses specifically for French students; rather their places are scattered across various houses. On gets the impression the whole thing is built on the idea that foreign students exist as a cultural opportunity for French ones.

At the time, this would have made oodles of sense, given that the French Empire was the second-largest in the world and thought to be near-invincible. May 1940, and later the failed colonial wars n Southeast Asia and Algeria would eventually put paid to all of that. But the CIUP still has a lot of soft power going for it: the list of people who have stayed there and taken away fond memories and favourable impressions of France is pretty long (Pierre Elliott Trudeau being one of them). It is, after all, very much what people want international education to be: a giant collider where people of all nations can meet, mingle, live, study and create together, forming lasting friendships that increase trans-national understanding. It’s a long way from the mercantilist vision of higher education which dominates today.

So if you’re in Paris: take a couple of hours to wander down to the CIUP. You’ll find it worth your while.