Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Rouen

The Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Rouen is a learned society created by letters patent of Louis XV on 17 June 1744.

The Seal of the Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Rouen.

The Academy of Rouen got its early start with a few friends with a common appreciation for botany who were in the habit of gathering in a small garden of the Bouvreuil suburb of Rouen, under the auspices of Fontenelle and Le Cornier de Cideville. The formal inception of the Academy of Rouen arose out of the officializing of those informal meetings into a learned society. The articles of the newly formed Academy were renewed and confirmed in Parliament on 10 February 1757. The first director was Tiphaigne La Roche, and its first benefactor was the abbé Legendre.

As with all French academies, abolished by the Revolution, the Académie de Rouen underwent a hiatus in 1793, until the prefect of Seine-Inférieure department, Count Beugnot and the mayor of Rouen, Pierre Nicolas de Fontenay, rechartered it in 1803. The academy recovered its archives and records on 29 June 1803, but not its library or its garden. On 1 June 1804, new letters patent approved its new charter, which was later confirmed on 10 June 1828.

A decree dated 12 April 1852 has granted the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Rouen public utility status.

In the absence of a university, the Académie has played, until 1965, a key role in the development of the movement of ideas in Rouen.

Its headquarters are now located at the Hôtel des sociétés savantes de Rouen.