Montpellier 1 University

The Montpellier 1 University finds its origins in the Middle Ages.
This long history has endowed the UM1 with a prestigious heritage. Based in remarkable historical buildings, it has preserved exceptional scientific, artistic and documentary collections. It is also the administrator of the Jardin des Plantes de Montpellier, the oldest botanical garden in France, founded in 1953.
Many students who have become famous have followed an education in Montpellier. Among them, the physician and writer François Rabelais who certainly best embodies the “happy-life” assured by a stay in Montpellier and the intellectual appetite-satisfied by the education and multidisciplinary research within the Montpellier 1 University.

 Montpellier 2 University

Created in 1808 by Napoleon 1st, the Faculty of Science started with seven chairs : mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, zoology, botany and mineralogy.
The Montpellier 2 University, Sciences and Techniques of Languedoc (UM2), was founded in 1970 within the framework of the Higher Education Act. Since 1964, the faculty has settled in a 30 hectare campus on the site of Triolet on which 146,000 m ² of buildings were built. The Faculty of Science, then the University, have gradually spread outside of the area by the successive development of the IUT (University Institue of Technology) of Montpellier (9 hectares, 30,700 m ² built), of the IUT of Nimes (5 hectares, 23,700 m ² built), the recently created departments of IUT in Sète (In 1879, the faculty created a research station of marine biology in Sète) and of Béziers and that of a campus dedicated to engineering science located within a kilometer of the main campus. Heiress of a prestigious past in Botany, Montpelier 2 University has preserved the property of the Institute of Botany, created in 1889 and situated next to the “Jardin des plantes de Montpellier”. The Institute of Chemistry, created at the same time as that of Botany, became in 1957 National higher school of chemistry and received the status of public administrative institution connected with the Montpellier 2 University.

Montpellier 3 University

The Faculty of Arts, Languages, Social Sciences and Humanities became the Montpellier 3 University in 1970.
It takes the name of Paul Valéry, a homage to the Sète-born writer who studied in Montpellier. Located north of the city on a campus brightened with gardens and lawns, pinery, laurales, cypress and magnolias, the Montpellier III university combines a typically Mediterranean environment with modern architecture : a Cyclopean wall, a maze and the monumental gate of Vasarely. Its privileged geographical location at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, along the Voie Domitienne, related to Montpellier university tradition and to the charm that the  Languedoc-Roussillon Region has for the quality of its social environment, promotes increased international exchanges - not only with all the Mediterranean countries, but also with those of Northern Europe.