Vieille Charité center
The Vieille Charité, located 2, rue de la Charité, in the heart of the Panier district in the 2nd arrondissement of Marseille, in the official Grands-Carmes district, is a building built in the 17th century, to the plans of Pierre Puget to house the destitute and the poor of the city. It corresponds to the Marseille implementation of the “great confinement” that Michel Foucault highlighted in his famous History of Madness in the Classical Age (1962).
The hospice is representative of 17th century architecture, particularly due to the presence of the Puget chapel and its ovoid dome.
Gradually losing its vocation at the end of the 19th century, it was close to disappearing in the 1950s, occupied only by poor inhabitants living in miserable conditions.
The chapel and the hospice were classified as a historic monument by decree of January 29, 1951. The whole having undergone a thorough renovation in the 1960s to 1980s, is today one of the many cultural institutions of the City of Marseille.