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Key figures

Origin and history

The Saint John d'Angers Hospital is a secular foundation created around 1180 under the leadership of Count Henry II Plantagenet and his senechal Étienne de Marsay. The first buildings, dating back to the last two decades of the 12th century, include the sick room, the chapel, the anterior cloister and the attic (after 1188). The vaulting of the sick room and the chapel ends at the beginning of the 13th century, with visible adjustments such as the more recent southeast span, which leads to structural changes. The medieval buildings dedicated to the religious community have mostly disappeared, with the exception of the bases of the 12th century washbasin and the stairway tower of the prioral house, added in the 15th century.

In the 16th century, architect Jean Delespine erected the charter building and its gallery opened in the cloister after 1534. The attic room was redesigned in the late 16th or 17th century, with the addition of arcades to support the structure. The 17th century also saw the reconstruction of the gallery along the hall of the sick, a north-east house (of which the skylights have disappeared) and the niche of the gate, dated 1662. In the 18th century, a long building was built on the garden side, followed in 1752 by the laundry and the stake (now a gymnasium). The granaries were transformed around 1765, a period marked by major repairs.

Disused in 1865, the hospital was converted into an archaeological museum in 1874, welcoming stone-like elements such as the well of the former town hall. Restorations, carried out until the 1920s by Lucien Magne, accompanied by partial destructions to restructure the neighborhood. Since 1968, the monument has exhibited Jean Lurçat's Le Chant du monde tapestry, and has been home to the contemporary tapestry museum since 1986. Ranked a Historic Monument in 1840, it is now owned by the commune of Angers.

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