Hôtel-Dieu

The Hôtel-Dieu (French pronunciation: [otɛl djø]; "God Shelter") is a public hospital located on the Île de la Cité in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, on the parvis of Notre-Dame. Tradition has it that the hospital was founded by Saint Landry in 651 AD, but the first official records date it to 829, making it the oldest in France and possibly the oldest continuously operating hospital in the world. The Hôtel-Dieu was the only hospital in the city until the beginning of the 17th century.

The original Hôtel-Dieu stood on the banks of the Seine on the southern side of the Île de la Cité. It was ravaged by fire several times and was rebuilt for the last time at its present location on the north side of the parvis of Notre Dame between 1867 and 1878, as part of Haussmann's renovation of Paris.

Currently operated by Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), the Hôtel-Dieu is a teaching hospital associated with the Paris Cité University.





== History ==





=== Overview ===

Originally, the Hôtel-Dieu admitted a wide range of people: not only the sick and injured, but also needy travellers and pilgrims, and indigents. Run by the Catholic Church for many centuries, the hospital's original mission was to provide "Christian charity dedicated to the shelter, spiritual comfort and treatment of the ailing poor.":44 An 18th century essayist, Louis Rondonneau de la Motte, wrote in his Essai Historique sur l'Hôtel-Dieu (1787): "the citizen and the foreigner, the Christian and the Turk, the Jew and the Idolater are all equally welcome."

This broad, charitable mission was to dominate until the end of the Ancien Régime. By 1789, the Age of Enlightenment—with its focus on the pursuit of knowledge via reason and evidence and on ideals such as progress, fraternity, and government dedicated to the well-being of the people—had left its mark on the agenda for hospital reform. This ushered in a more scientific approach to hospital design that was to influence medical practice and management for more than a century.