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
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre response to the threatening atmosphere for Huguenots in these cities. In Rouen, where some hundreds were killed, the Huguenot community shrank from 16,500 to fewer than 3,000 mainly as a result of conversions and emigration to safer cities or countries. Some cities unaffected by the violence nevertheless witnessed a sharp decline in their Huguenot population. It has been claimed that the Huguenot community represented as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, declining to 7-8% by the end of the 16th century, and further after heavy persecution began once again during