Across the Seine from the Louvre, Louis XIV built the Collège des Quatre-Nations (College of the Four Nations) (1662-1672), an ensemble of four baroque palaces and a domed church, to house students coming to Paris from four provinces recently attached to France (today it is the Institut de France).
The cultural life of the city also flourished; the city's future most famous theater, the Comédie Française, was created in 1681 on a former tennis court on the Rue Fossés Saint-Germain-des-Prés.