The title of Prince of Conti was a French noble title, assumed by a cadet branch of the house of Bourbon-Condé. It was taken from Conty, a small town of northern France, c. 35 km southwest of Amiens, which came into the Condé family by the marriage of Louis of Bourbon, first prince of Condé, with Eleanor de Roye in 1551. During the time that the House of Bourbon ruled France from the reign of King Henry IV of France to the reign of King Louis-Philippe of the French, the Princes de Conti were considered Princes du Sang.
François de Bourbon (1558–1614), the third son of this marriage, was given the title of marquess of Conti, and between 1581 and 1597 was elevated to the rank of prince of Conti. Conti died in 1614 and since his only child Marie had predeceased him in 1610, the title lapsed.
In 1629 the title of prince de Conti was revived in favor of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti (1629–1666), second son of Henry II, Prince of Condé, and brother of Louis, the great Condé. The holder of the title held the style of Serene Highness.
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“What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)