Palais universitaire

The visual finale of the avenue de la liberté, this huge building is more than 100 metres in length. It was intended to brilliantly represent German culture and be a part of the new town imagined by the Germans after their victory in 1870. Effectively, it is a junction between the university campus and the town centre, right below the River of Strasbourg which surrounds l'Ill. Built between 1879 and 1884 in a mixture of German neoclassical and Italian Renaissance styles, it contains many statues of German writers and scholars such as Goethe, Schiller and Holderlin.

It has a vast interior, on several floors, with a gigantic atrium which connects everything. Behind the main building there is a large garden in which there are a series of diverse scientific buildings, such as the planetarium and the zoological museum.

At the end you will find the botanical gardens and the observatory. In the middle there is a statue of Goethe. Therefore, it is a building of great architectural, cultural and political importance which was chosen to host the first session of the European Council.