Oldest of the hospitals of Marseilles present at few things close the aspect which is it today his.
The two wings are occupied: One by the administration, the offices and the chocolate éclairs; the other by the Medical school and the remainder of the hospital personnel. The central body of the building includes/understands at the ground floor pharmacy, the kitchen, and the service of the baths and showers. With each of the three stages, are laid out two rooms of 32 beds separated by a step lost with at the end from each room the " places from aisance".L' Hôtel-Dieu thus has with this date of 192 beds hospitalization.
The construction of the Hospital is a long history.
It was decided into 1593 per Charles de Cazaulx with the meeting of the hospital St Jacques de Galice and the hospital of St Spirit, to which always the escutcheon testifies to the Hotel God.
It was then about a whole of more or less disparate masonries.
In XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries, the hospital remains less one center of care which a house where the patients are received, people without resources, found children, in a word the " poor ", those which have need for assistance. There was a room of men on the first floor and women on the second floor. 95 beds were intended for the " fébricitants " (medicine), 29 with wounded (surgery). It was a monstrous gathering the feverish one, casualties, beggars, pregnant or been confined women. Very often there were two or three patients by bed. The rooms were low, badly ventilated, icy in winter, torrid in summer.
The central court at the beginning of XVIIIe century resembled a caravanserai with hens which picoraient and of the linen extended to the windows.
The access of the hospital was very difficult: it was necessary to reduce the patient from car, then to traverse 200 m on a litter by a narrow street with an excessive slope which ended in a particularly stiff staircase.
The medical state was deplorable with a massive superinfection of wounded which made essential a repair of the hospitalization. Moreover, the startup in 1778 of new rooms involved a reduction in mortality for the casualties.
The first stone of the Hospital, such as we see it still today, was posed in 1753 with a plate carrying the inscription " the Faith conceived, the Hope gave him the day, Charity will raise it ". It is indeed thanks to the donations, in particular of Guillaume Duvair, President of the Parliament of Provence and Jacques Matignon, Vicaire of St Victor that this hospital realization could be born. Jacques Hardouin Mansart, grandson of François Mansart establishes in 1753 the plans of the Hospital whose work is entrusted to architects of the city of which Joseph Brun who carries out the monumental staircases in 1782. The principal frontage dates from XVIIIe century whereas the side wings are built only in 1860.
The final building was inaugurated on November 15, 1866, at the time of the festival of Impératrice Eugenie.
The Hospital will remain for a long time the hospital of the Marseillais, and it is only in 1993 that the last patients will leave it.
