On 16 September 2007, on French Heritage Day, three little boys visited the Val de Grace Hospital, and then the École Militaire. Their impressions were revealing. At the first ‘. . . soldiers are being treated with some very strange instruments’, and at the second (after some hesitation) ‘. . . this is where Papa spends his days riding horses’.

These comments raise some questions about the place’s identity. In addition to the difficulty which any student at the Joint Services Defence College (Collège interarmées de défense, CID) has to make its teaching intelligible to the civilian world, there is also the question of the visitor’s feelings of confusion when he is faced by the dissonance between the architecture of the École Militaire and its function. Is it a barracks, or a school, or a garage, or a tennis club, or an equestrian centre, or a museum? It has been said that ‘. . . of all cultural and artistic productions, the architecture of a place is without doubt what most influences our physical and psychological behaviour, because we feel its permanent influence every day.'⁽¹⁾ It therefore seems reasonable for a graduate of CID course 13, a user of the École Militaire, to reflect on the nature of his environment. Is the École Militaire really a military school?

While its origins show clearly that it was designed as a military school, the alterations imposed on it have made a travesty of the original project. It is legitimate to suggest how the École Militaire can return to its original purpose, with the aim of making it an ‘international institution of reference’.⁽²⁾