The Paris Opéra dates back to the reign of Louis XIV and his founding in 1669 the Académie d'Opéra, which was renamed three years later the Académie Royale de Musique under the directorship of the Italian-born composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who transformed court divertissements into professional theatre. Louis XIV, a patron of the dance as well as an accomplished dancer, gained his epithet "the Sun King'' from his role as the personification of the Sun in the Ballet de la Nuit. The cultured monarch founded in 1661 the Académie Royale de Danse, and in the closing years of his reign he established in 1713 a school of dance which continues today as the Paris Opéra Ecole de Danse, the oldest school of its kind. The Paris Opéra Ballet, cradle of classical dance, developed under the guidance of distinguished ballet masters through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.