Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Paris: Street facade showing loggia spanning the central courtyard

Regarded as the oldest hospital in the city of Paris, where it still resides on the left bank of the Île de la Cité, next to Notre-Dame. The Hôtel-Dieu was founded by Saint Landry in 651. The institution and various buildings existed on the site until a fire in 1772. The present architecture dates from 1877. Between 1865 and 1876 Diet erected and modified Gilbert’s design (1864) for the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, to which Diet contributed an Italianate chapel on a Greek-cross plan at the end of the central court. There is a small garden in the courtyard behind the loggia that links the two wings. Until 1908, when the new regulations demanded Church and the State to be treated separately, medical care was given by the Augustine Sisters of the Hotel-Dieu. It is still has 349 beds and is used for emergency care.