1663
Creation of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Academy of Literature and the Humanities)
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres was originally formed as a small committee of humanists, members of the Académie Française, in February 1663. They met under the leadership of Colbert, who looked to them for advice on the Latin inscriptions placed on monuments and medals. Custodian of a very long tradition of scholarship, its mission today is the advancement and dissemination of knowledge in the fields of classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, through to the classical age, and of all the civilizations of the Near and Far East.