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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Charles-Foix hospital of Ivry-sur-Seine has its origins in the Incurable Hospital, founded in 1625 thanks to a legacy of Abbé Joulet de Châtillon to welcome incurable patients. Originally set up in rue de Sèvres in Paris (current hospital Laennec), he was transferred to Ivry in 1849 when the Public Assistance was created. The chosen site, acquired in 1851, was once the park of a 17th century castle, owned by Claude Bosc, adviser to the Paris Parliament.

Between 1864 and 1869, under the Second Empire, architect Théodore Labrouste, the first chief architect of the hospitals in Paris and the Rome Prize, built the new hospital to accommodate 2,500 residents transferred from Paris. The inauguration took place in 1873 in the presence of Marshal Mac-Mahon, although Empress Eugénie, then in exile, was associated with the legend of a chestnut tree planted in the courtyard bearing his name. The establishment, designed with rigorous symmetry and covered galleries to facilitate traffic, reflects the hygienist and aerist concerns of the 19th century.

The Notre-Dame-de-l'Annunciation chapel, the jewel of the ensemble, marks innovation by its metal frame—a first for a religious building in France—and its italianist style. It houses a Merklin-Schutze organ of 1869 and a marble cenotaph of the cardinal of La Rochefoucauld, transferred from the former Parisian hospice. Ranked a historic monument in 1997 with other elements of the site, it illustrates the architectural eclecticism of the period.

Renamed the Charles Foix Hospital in 1976 as a tribute to the neurologist who ran a service there, the institution specializes in geriatrics after its merger with the hospital group Pitié-Salpêtrière in 2011. Today integrated into the AP-HP and Sorbonne University, it also houses the Charles Foix Institute of longevity, dedicated to research on aging, and trains professionals through degrees in gerontology. His history is crossed with figures such as Georges Perec or Louis-François Delisse, making it both a medical and a heritage place.

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