Paris in the 16th century include the Tuileries Palace, the Fontaine des Innocents, the Lescot wing of the Louvre; the church of Saint-Eustache (1532); and the Hôtel Carnavalet, begun in 1545, now the museum of the history of Paris. During the century Paris was the second most important center of book publishing centers of Europe, after Venice. The University of Paris devoted its attentions largely to fighting the Protestant heresy, the King founded the College of France as a new center of learning independent of the university. Tensions between Protestants and Catholics grew, culminating in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, when several thousand
Paris in the 16th century art, did not come until the very end of the century with the reign of Henry IV. Through the 16th century, there were only four bridges across the Seine, two on each bank, insufficient for the growing city and the amount of traffic they carried. The Paris bridges at the beginning of the 16th century were largely made of wood, and were frequently washed away in floods or knocked down by ice on the frozen river. The most important bridge was the Pont au Change, which had been built in 1304 under Philip le Bel, and was site where the