A new showcase for Montpellier medicine!
The oldest medical school in the Western world is leaving downtown Montpellier to move to the Arnaud de Villeneuve campus. All while reviving a long tradition of educational innovation...
A center of gravity has just shifted. The pride of the University of Montpellier and emblem of a city renowned worldwide for its medical education since the 13th century, the Faculty of Medicine had been housed since 1795 in the former monastery adjacent to Saint-Pierre Cathedral. It has now left this prestigious building to be reborn in an ultra-modern glass structure at the heart of the Arnaud de Villeneuve campus.
Medicine of the future
A campus largely dedicated to biology and health: it is home to the Regional University Hospital Center, the UM Medical Teaching Unit, and high-level research units (the Institute of Human Genetics,the Institute of Functional Genomics, the Center for Structural Biology, andthe University Institute for Research ); as well as the CNRS's Genopolys center, a place for scientific exchanges and meetings in the field of health.
Located close to hospital campuses and research centers, the new faculty offers a medical training platform that is unique in France and at the cutting edge of new teaching methods: videoconferencing, visual communication, remote knowledge sharing, telemedicine, medical simulation, medical robotics, and more.
Putting people at the heart of education
It also aims to be a place of learning where teaching focuses on the human aspect, for the greater benefit of students. Role-playing, simulation of medical procedures, and even theater workshops to teach future practitioners "soft skills": the project's designers wanted to promote a humanistic and warm vision of medical practice.
This was a desire thatMontpellier architect François Fontès wanted to place at the heart of the building's design, which "must evoke its history and influence in a modern way, but also the essence of a science of humanity."
800 years of history
The cradle of medical education, Montpellier owes its renown to its iconic faculty founded in 1220—the oldest medical school in the Western world still in operation. The beginnings of medical education in Montpellier are intertwined with those of the city itself, a trading town founded in 985 on a major communications route, at the crossroads of Jewish, Arab, and Italian influences.
This reputation attracted illustrious practitioners to Montpellier, such as Arnaud de Villeneuve, Gui de Chauliac, François Lapeyronie, Rondelet, who built the first anatomy amphitheater, Nostradamus, who was expelled for insubordination, and François Rabelais, who received his doctorate in medicine in 1537.
In figures
Total cost: €45.9 million
3,600 students
11,440 m² of total floor space on 6 levels
5 lecture halls with 200 to 240 seats
25 classrooms or workrooms
