The Les Récollets International Reception Centre as it exists today is the result of building, demolition, additions and conversions on connection with the various uses it has known since the 17th century. The latest refurbishment work enabling its use as an international reception centre was by the ‘Reichen et Robert’ architecture practice. The period from 1603 until the French Revolution (1789) saw the establishment of the first buildings by the religious order of the Récollets, a mendicant order taking vows of poverty. At that time it was a rustic complex with kitchen garden and fields, lying outside the city limits. Shortly before the French Revolution, the property became attached to Paris via the enclosure by the Farmers General. The convent was requisitioned during the 1789 French Revolution, seeing use as a barracks, then briefly as a weaving mill. From 1795 onwards it saw a new use that would last until 1860 — during this period the former convent was a hospice for the elderly, then a “Hospice for the Incurable – Men”. During this period, a new unity was brought to the rear façade by remodelling into a succession of 29 bays. In 1860, a decision by Emperor Napoléon III transferred the hospice for incurables and assigned the establishment to the War Ministry for use as a military hospital known as Villemin Military Hospital. This hospital remained in operation for more than a century, right up till 1968. Meanwhile, the wide-ranging urban planning changes that affected Paris in the 19th and 20th centuries gradually modified and encroached on the property’s boundaries. In 1928, the military authorities officially transferred part of the hospital’s land to the Eastern Railway Company. The new boundary wall crossed the old 17th century buildings diagonally, giving the front façade the form we see today. The military hospital closed in 1968, and the remaining land was assigned to the establishment of a University Hospital (Saint Louis Lariboisière), a City of Paris public garden and other improvement works. The buildings themselves were handed over to the Ministry of the Environment to set up an Architectural Education Unit named “Paris Villemin”, operating from 1970 to 1990. Between 1990 and 1992, the building was squatted by an artists’ collective named “The Angels of Les Récollets” who left behind numerous works, certain of which have been re-used in the present conversion. From 1992 onwards, several conversion projects were investigated but never came to anything. In 1999 the Ministry of the Environment, with the support of a steering committee composed of representatives from several Ministries, the City of Paris, the Ile de France region and local voluntary organisations, decided to devote this establishment to the reception of European scientists and artists.