In 1295 France and Scotland agreed to stand together against England. Historians call it the Auld Alliance, and Paris still holds a few traces of it. We went looking for them in the Latin Quarter and on the Île de la Cité.
The Collège des Écossais
Our first stop is 65 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine in the 5th arrondissement, home of the old Collège des Écossais, the Scots College. Its story goes back to 1325, when David, Bishop of Moray, set up places for students from his diocese at the University of Paris. An act of 1333 confirmed the foundation. The first college stood on rue des Amandiers, today’s rue Laplace.
The building we see now is younger. France’s heritage record dates it to building work in 1662 and 1665, when the college moved to what was then the rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor. Its façade, chapel and inner staircase have been listed as a historic monument since 1945. It is not a museum, so we enjoy the 17th-century front from the pavement. The college’s teaching days ended with the French Revolution.
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Rue d’Écosse
A short walk away in the same arrondissement, rue d’Écosse is a dead-end lane off rue de Lanneau, just 35 metres long. The City of Paris street register says it is named for the nearby Collège des Écossais, and that the lane already existed at the end of the 12th century, then called rue du Chauderon.
A royal wedding at Notre-Dame
The alliance had its grandest day in Paris on 24 April 1558, when Mary, Queen of Scots, married Francis, the French Dauphin, at Notre-Dame de Paris. Mary was 15 and had grown up at the French court. Francis became King of France the following year.
The Scots stayed after the royal wedding. Historians at the University of Manchester point to well-established Scottish communities in Paris, Bordeaux and La Rochelle throughout the 17th century.
So next time we cross the Latin Quarter, we slow down on rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, look up at that 17th-century façade, and remember the Scottish students who once filled these streets.
Checked October 2026.
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