Wherever you go in France, the country’s artistic heritage is very much in evidence. France does have her share of ugly urban sprawl and unlovely out-of-town hypermarkets, but these are eclipsed by her wealth of beautifully restored and maintained historic buildings which, together with striking new architecture and works of art, are part of the fabric of everyday life. France has had an important role throughout the history of western art which began with the cave painters of the Dordogne, long before their land became a nation. From the Renaissance onwards French kings invited the finest European painters to decorate their palaces, and Paris became the center of nearly all important artistic developments, whether the artists concerned were French or not. It was only in the nineteenth century that French painters formed a distinctively French movement that was far more influential than the Flemish, German and Italian schools of previous centuries. The impressionists and their successors radically altered the direction of European art, attracting even more foreign artists to Paris. Since the seventeenth century, when the Academies of painting and sculpture, and architecture were founded, architecture and the visual arts have been a central concern of the French state. Today, the Ministry of Culture is housed in the elegant seventeenth-century Palais-Royal, alongside two of the nation’s highest institutions, the Conseil Constitutionnel and the Conseil d’Etat, exemplifying the belief of Catherine Trautmann, the culture minister from 1997 to 2000, that “culture is at the heart of our democratic system.” This sentiment echoes the aims of her predecessors who include de Gaulle’s post-war minister Andre Malraux and Mitterrand’s innovative and daring minister, Jack Lang, both of whom wanted to enrich the lives of ordinary citizens.