{"id":23137,"date":"2025-09-18T11:13:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T11:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paristopten.com\/?post_type=monument&p=23137"},"modified":"2026-08-01T08:54:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:54:44","slug":"fondation-avicenne","status":"publish","type":"monument","link":"https:\/\/www.paristopten.com\/fr\/monuments\/fondation-avicenne\/","title":{"rendered":"Fondation Avicenne"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fondation Avicenne is a student residence at 27 D boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris<\/strong>, on the campus of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. Built as the Maison de l’Iran and inaugurated in November 1969, it is the tallest building on the campus at 38 metres<\/strong> and one of the very few buildings in France whose living space hangs from an external steel frame rather than resting on the ground. It has been an inscribed monument historique<\/em> since 29 October 2008. After closing to residents in 2007, it reopened in September 2024 with 111 rooms<\/strong> following a rehabilitation by Béguin & Macchini. It is a working residence, not a museum: you can see the exterior for free from the campus park at any time, but the inside is reached only on a booked guided tour.<\/p>

Fondation Avicenne at a glance<\/h2>
Adresse<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
27 D boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Nearest stations<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
Cit\u00e9 Universitaire (RER B); Cit\u00e9 Universitaire (tram T3a); buses 21 and 216<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
T\u00e9l\u00e9phone<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
+33 (0)1 43 13 26 87<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Reception hours<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 18:00. Closed at weekends<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Inaugurated<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
November 1969, as the Maison de l\u2019Iran<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Architects<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
Claude Parent and engineer Andr\u00e9 Bloc, with Mohsen Foroughi and Heydar Ghiai; team also included Claude Colle and Ren\u00e9 Sarger<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Hauteur<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
38 m (125 ft) porticos; the tallest building at the Cit\u00e9 internationale<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Heritage status<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
Inscribed monument historique<\/em>, 29 October 2008 (ref. PA75140012)<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Pi\u00e8ces<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
111, over eight floors, up from 96 before the works<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Rents (2026)<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
Individual studios \u20ac430 to \u20ac590 per month; double studios \u20ac650 to \u20ac660<\/div><\/td><\/tr>
Can you go inside?<\/strong><\/div><\/td>
Not as a walk-in visitor. Interiors are seen on booked Cit\u00e9 internationale guided tours<\/div><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
Address, phone, hours, rents and room count from the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (ciup.fr); heritage reference from the French Ministry of Culture’s Mérimée database.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Can you visit the Fondation Avicenne?<\/h2>

You can look at it whenever you like, and you can go inside only with a booking. The Fondation Avicenne stands in the open park of the Cité internationale, which is free to walk through, so the exterior costs nothing to see. The building itself houses 111 students and researchers and keeps a staffed reception, so there is no ticket desk and no drop-in tour.<\/p>

The Cité internationale runs themed guided tours that go inside three of its houses, chosen from the campus and subject to availability on the day. Tours last about two hours and are by reservation only. For individuals, themed tours run on Sundays at 14:30, roughly two Sundays a month. Groups need at least 10 people and must book at least 20 days ahead; visits can be arranged mornings between 10:00 and 12:00 or afternoons between 14:00 and 18:00, and guides work in English, Spanish and Italian as well as French. External guides bringing their own group pay an entrance fee of €7 per visitor to the heritage centre. The Fondation Avicenne has also appeared in the guided-visit programmes for France’s heritage and architecture weekends, which is the most reliable way to get inside a building that is otherwise residential.<\/p>

One correction worth making, because it is repeated widely online: L\/OBLIQUE, the campus heritage centre, opened on the ground floor of the Fondation Avicenne in April 2013, and many listings still say so. The Cité internationale now gives the heritage centre’s address as the Maison internationale, 21 boulevard Jourdan<\/strong>, open daily from 11:00 to 21:00, on +33 1 76 21 26 96. If you are travelling specifically to see the exhibition, go to number 21, not number 27.<\/p>

How do you get to the Fondation Avicenne?<\/h2>

Take RER B to Cité Universitaire. The station sits directly opposite the campus on boulevard Jourdan, so you cross one road and you are in the park. Tram T3a stops at the same name, and buses 21 and 216 serve the boulevard. The RER B station has lifts to the platforms.<\/p>

Once inside the park, the Fondation Avicenne is the easiest building on campus to find. It is the tall one with the black steel frame and the external spiral staircase, and it is visible from the boulevard périphérique, which runs along the southern edge of the site. If you are coming from central Paris and want to make a half day of it, the Parc Montsouris sits immediately north<\/a> of the boulevard, a two-minute walk away.<\/p>

Why is the building suspended in the air?<\/h2>

Because the rooms hang from a steel skeleton instead of sitting on foundations. Three porticos, each built from welded sheet-metal caissons and rising about 38 metres, carry the load. A secondary frame hangs from them, and that frame supports two four-storey blocks of rooms, separated by a recessed storey that was originally the director’s flat. A second, independent building tucks underneath the first and holds the shared services; lifts link the two.<\/p>

The design solves a specific problem. The site backs onto the périphérique, so the west facade and the two blind gable ends are treated as an acoustic screen, and only the fully glazed facade takes natural light. The visual signature comes from the contrast between black structural steel and recessed white facades, and from the staircase: it is the building’s only stair, pushed outside the envelope, where it becomes a monumental steel double inverted spiral. Treating the only stair as sculpture is what makes the building recognisable at a glance from the ring road.<\/p>

Claude Parent was the driving figure. The commission helped build the reputation of an architect later elected to the Académie des beaux-arts in 2005, and it owes a debt to the experimental house at Cap d’Antibes that Parent and André Bloc were designing at the same time. It is a very different proposition from the city’s better-known historical landmarks<\/a>, and it is free.<\/p>

Why was it built as the Maison de l’Iran?<\/h2>

It was Iran’s national pavilion, financed by the Iranian state, and it exists partly because an empress had lived on the campus herself. Farah Diba, Shahbanou of Iran, had been a resident of the Collège néerlandais at the Cité internationale, and she wanted her country represented in the park. The government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi paid for a house of 100 rooms for Iranian students, at a moment when Iran was opening up internationally and cultivating cultural ties with France.<\/p>

The building also closed a chapter. For more than 40 years afterwards it was the last house constructed at the Cité internationale, marking the end of the campus’s second wave of post-war building.<\/p>

Why did Iran give the building up?<\/h2>

Because the house that was meant to advertise the regime quickly became a base for opposing it. Iranian students in Paris turned the pavilion into a focal point of opposition to the Shah’s government. The house was closed, and Iran then formally abandoned it.<\/p>

The Cité internationale took the building over and reopened it in 1972 under a new name: Fondation Avicenne, after Avicenna, the Persian physician and philosopher known in Persian as Ibn Sina, who lived from 980 to 1037. The choice kept the Persian connection while detaching the building from the government that had paid for it. From that point it stopped being reserved for one nationality, which is the single fact most often got wrong about it today.<\/p>

Is it still a residence for Iranian students?<\/h2>

No. It has not been an Iranian house since the handover in 1972. The Fondation Avicenne is run by the Fondation nationale of the Cité internationale and takes students and researchers of any nationality; the Cité currently counts 10 nationalities in the house. The Persian name is a tribute to a scholar, not a nationality requirement.<\/p>

What happened during the 2019 to 2024 renovation?<\/h2>

The building was stripped back and rebuilt to modern standards without changing what it looks like. It had closed to residents in 2007 because it was too dilapidated to house anyone. Works began at the end of 2019, the rehabilitation itself ran roughly three years under the Béguin & Macchini agency, and the house reopened in September 2024 and was formally inaugurated on 28 November 2024.<\/p>

Because the building is protected, the team worked in consultation with an architect of the Bâtiments de France and historians of contemporary architecture, restoring the facades to their original condition. The changes are mostly invisible from outside:<\/p>