The chapel of the Royal Athenaeum

This vast complex consists of a quadrilateral built in the first half of the seventeenth century and a chapel dating from 1609-1612. The complex housed the Jesuit novitiate until 1773, when they were expelled. Maria Theresa of Austria, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, then donated the former novitiate to the cathedral chapter, which established the teaching of the humanities. This new function required the expansion of the buildings in 1878, to give the whole its current appearance.
Practically blind, the façade of the south-east wing is built of fitted stone and is pierced by a portal with Louis XVI motifs. On the courtyard side, this wing shows a gallery, plastered in its upper part, composed of thirteen Renaissance arcades with Tuscan columns sometimes twinned. Two cartouches offer a chronology, the first, dating from the seventeenth century, indicates the construction and the second, 1881, the restoration. This gallery continues on the right by a wing with Renaissance style bays formerly crossed. Facing the gallery, stands a more imposing wing, plastered in the nineteenth century, very similar to the one that closes the courtyard. On the street side, this wing includes, among other things, a door with leafy decoration surmounted by a small niche with a triangular pediment. The whole is covered with hipped roof pierced by dormers also hipped.
Classified as a monument on 10 May 1984

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