Confiscated and vandalised during the French Revolution and shelled by the Prussian army, the Irish College in Paris has had an eventful history. Now restored, it will be opened as an Irish cultural centre this week, writes Frank McDonald
There was always something compelling about the restoration of the Irish College in Paris. Located in Rue des Irlandais - a quiet, narrow street in the Latin Quarter, not far from the Pantheon and the Sorbonne - it simply couldn't be left to go to rack and ruin. It was too important, too steeped in history, to be forgotten.
Giving it a new role in the 21st century is also an exercise in cultural diplomacy. In the context of the "Berlin versus Boston" debate, the Irish College is firmly rooted in Europe. Not just anywhere, but in Paris. And however much the European Union is enlarged, Paris will always be its cultural capital, the ne plus ultra of European cities.
But first, we had to regain control of the Collège des Irlandais. For half-a-century, it had been occupied by Polish seminarians studying in Paris - including the present Pope. They had been let in "on the nod" in 1948, after the Communists took power in Poland, and nothing could be done with the building as long as they remained in situ.
The Irish had a legitimate claim. In 1623 Louis XIII - the king associated with the musketeers - granted Letters Patent permitting "certain Hibernian priests and scholars" to collect funds in Paris for their support. In 1677, they were given possession of the College des Lombards, by Louis XIV, the Sun King.
Bursting at the seams with priestly refugees from the Penal Laws at home, they finally acquired a building of their own in 1769 - a town house with a substantial garden on the Rue de Cheval Vert (now the Rue des Irlandais). Two wings were added, forming a courtyard, when it was transformed into the Collegium Clericorum Hibernoram.
Confiscated by the Revolution and vandalised during the Terror, the college was reconstituted by Napoleon as a Franco-Irish foundation in 1805, inaugurating an arrangement that continues to this day; his brother Jerome, later King of Westphalia, was at school here, as was Eugene de Beauharnais, son of his first wife, Josephine.
When compensation for the revolutionary confiscation was eventually paid after the Bourbon restoration in 1818, it was the British Government, as Ireland's lawful ruler at the time, which purloined the money and sank it into building two of the great works of the Regency period - London's Marble Arch and the Brighton Pavilion.
During the turbulent Paris Commune in 1870-71, the Irish College - then serving as a field hospital - was shelled in the Prussian bombardment of the city. It later survived anti-Catholic nationalisation in 1905 and the Nazi occupation of Paris from 1940 to 1944 to be used as a refuge for displaced persons claiming US citizenship after the war.
Then came the Poles, led by an advance party of priests who had been freed from Dachau.
Maynooth was in its heyday at the time and Ireland's need for a base in Paris for its priests to study was less pressing than theirs, so they were given the benefit of Irish hospitality - though without any legal rights, even as sitting tenants.
Monsignor Brendan Devlin, who became rector of the Collège des Irlandais in the 1980s, was the first to entertain serious hopes of gaining vacant possession of its "Polish wing". Assisted by Father Liam Swords, he set in motion a discreet lobbying campaign to secure support for the reassertion of Ireland's historic rights.
The Poles began to get the message that they were there on sufferance when the south wing was partially restored, with assistance from Pernod Ricard, the owners of Irish Distillers. A lump of Wicklow granite, inscribed in French, records the fact that it was officially opened by le Premier Ministre, one Cathal Ó hEochaigh.
This plaque, intended for incorporation into a wall of the college, has been consigned to a relatively obscure location in the garden, presumably to reflect the former Taoiseach's current standing - even in the city he loved so well. "We were thinking of draping it in a Charvet shirt," quipped one of those involved in the restoration project.
In 1989 the late Cardinal Tomás O Fiaich put into words the Irish ambition when he expressed his hope that the college "will one day house an Irish Cultural Centre, with library, language training, student exchanges - in short, a meeting place where Ireland will meet France and through France the wider Europe".
After the Poles moved out in 1997, this grand projet could at last be set in train.
"We didn't know they were going to leave until they left," says William Glynn, chairman of the Fondation Irlandaise, which owns the college and other properties in Paris. "We couldn't plan anything until they were physically gone."
A survey of the building was carried out by conservation architect David Slattery, who found the Polish wing in such decay through lack of maintenance over the years that anyone occupying it would be at risk. Capricorn beetles had eaten away some of the oak beams in the roof and the Mansard windows were hanging out of their housing.
"It was in a bloody awful state," Slattery says. The roof of the library was sagging, the ceiling of the chapel below it cracked in places and the belfry over the main entrance required complete reconstruction. Proper bedrooms, some 50 in all, needed to be provided as well as facilities for exhibitions, research, meetings and conferences.
The Fondation had some funds - it owns a fine apartment block in the 17th arondissement, plus half the buildings on the opposite side of the Rue des Irlandais - but it clearly needed State support. "We timed our run for the money when the economy was at its peak and got sanction for it in spring 2000," Glynn recalls. "We were very lucky".
The Government, flush with revenue at the time, put up €10.5 million through the Office of Public Works, which also helped in developing a brief for the public areas as well as supplying the services of two of its architects, John Cahill and Aidan Quinn, to supervise no less than 27 separate contracts for different elements of the project.
The Collège des Irlandais is a protected structure, part of the Histoire de Paris, as a plaque on the street makes clear, so all of the work needed approval from Batiments de France - in particular, one of its inspectors, Madame Beau. She turned out to be a tough taskmistress, with very definite views on how it should be handled.
She put her foot down at the proposal to leave masonry in the external walls exposed, dismissing this as a "rural" approach ill-suited to a Paris street. And so, apart from the fine ashlar stonework at the entrance, the walls were all plastered. She also specified the colour scheme - grey windows set in lime-rendered walls - and other details.
Three bells dating from 1750 - "not quite Mozartian in tone", as Slattery put it, are to be reinstated in the belfry. The cast iron crest of the college above its impressive entrance doors, featuring an Irish harp surmounted by a crown, has been cleaned up in preparation for next Friday's official opening.
French architect, Marc Lacombe, was responsible for the renovation of the building, including the main exhibition area, conference facilities and the rooms upstairs, while Slattery was the consultant for the restoration of its exterior as well as the more important interiors, notably the chapel and library, which required re-roofing.
The chapel is used for Mass every Sunday at 11.30 a.m. And that is the Catholic Church's only direct involvement in the College des Irlandais. Its role was delimited by a 1990 French decree reconstituting the foundation that owns the property. In other words, its restoration and new role as a cultural centre is a secular project.
Glynn is delighted that the project, "a lifetime ambition for many" is nearing completion. "Even against all the odds, I always felt a sense of destiny about this, and now we've achieved it. The asset of the college will always be there and we have the intellectual capacity to make good use of it."