Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris

photography by GIANNI OPRANDI
text by JOHN JEFFERSON SELVE

 

A surprise awaits as we enter the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris: there is no security checkpoint, nobody to search us. The tense political climate and increased police presence, so evident everywhere else in the French capital, don’t seem to exist here, as if there’s no need for them within these walls. The Cité Internationale is fenced-in, yet open. A certain serenity reigns, and we will experience this quasi-anachronistic sensation again and again, for other reasons, during our lengthy perambulation through the heart of these exceptional 34 hectares.

We should begin by noting that by 1918, France had lost a third of its student population to World War I. The war had been a massacre, a descent into absurdity that would traumatize the country forever after. From it, the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline would spin one of the greatest books…