school of fine arts founded (as the Académie Royale d'Architecture) in Paris in 1671 by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of Louis XIV; it merged with the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (founded in 1648) in 1793. The school offered instruction in drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and engraving to students selected by competitive examination; since 1968, architecture is no longer taught there.

Beaux-Arts architectural design has been particularly influential. About 1935 the system of the Paris school began to be displaced by an essentially German curriculum stemming from functionalism and machine-inspired theory taught at the Bauhaus.