Save Our Hôtel-Dieu

  Tourists walking across the Ile de la Cité last week might have been puzzled by the large banners draped across the hospital next to Notre-Dame. “Sauvez Notre Hôtel-Dieu,” they read. “Save Our Hôtel-Dieu!” Yes, the oldest hospital in Paris is being threatened with closure. Its foe is the Direction Générale for the Ile-de-France, the Department that includes the city of Paris. The Direction Générale has determined that the law courts of the Palais de Justice, which shares the Ile de la Cité island with the Hôtel-Dieu, require more space. They have directed the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, to give the Palais de Justice another 120,000 square meters of room. And they strongly recommended that this new space come from the building that the Hôtel-Dieu currently inhabits. This would mean closing the hospital itself and relocating its functions to other hospitals around Paris. The Hôtel-Dieu hospital has existed on the Ile de la Cité since the 7th century. It was founded in 651 by the Bishop of Paris, making it the oldest hospital in Paris. It was also the only hospital in Paris up through the Renaissance. Originally, the Hôtel-Dieu was a complex of buildings occupying the area just south of Notre-Dame, part of the Left Bank, and even spanning the Seine between these areas, with buildings built on the Pont au Double. Fires damaged the buildings several times over their long history requiring them to be rebuilt, but the Hôtel-Dieu hospital has remained in one form or another for over 1,300 years. Its current building was built from 1864-1877, when Baron Haussmann ordered the destruction of the slums on the Ile de la Cité. It was designed in an Italianate classical style. Currently, the Hôtel-Dieu is the main hospital serving the nine inner arrondissements of Paris. It receives 120,000 emergency patients a year and is the only 24-hour facility in Paris for treating ophthalmologic emergencies. It also serves as an important teaching hospital. Groups opposing the closing of the Hôtel-Dieu claim that the Direction Générale’s motivations are more economic than logistical. Recent budget cuts are requiring that the Ile de France find ways to save several hundred million euros and eliminating the cost of the Hôtel-Dieu would help in this effort. But the decision has not been made yet. Mayor Delanoë recently responded to the Direction Générale’s request with a letter stating that he does not support the closing of the Hôtel-Dieu. “…the maintenance of a near-by hospital providing urgent care at the Hôtel-Dieu seems to me to be essential,” he said. Delanoë urged the Direction Générale to continue its search for an appropriate space for expanding the Palais de Justice. As a suggestion, he recommended that they consider the Boulevard Vincent-Auriol, just north of the new Bibliotheque Nationale François Mitterrand. This area is currently undergoing dramatic redevelopment. And so the fight to “Save Our Hôtel-Dieu!” is far from over. The debate is likely to continue through autumn. In the meantime, a petition of supporters of keeping the hospital open is available for signing at the hospital itself, as well as the Mairie of the 4th Arrondissement at 2, Place Baudoyer (on the rue de Rivoli, just east of the Hôtel de Ville).