The Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital (''Centre hospitalier national d’ophtalmologie des Quinze-Vingts'') is France's national ophthalmology hospital located in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, in the 12th arrondissement. The hospital gave its name to the ''Quinze-Vingts''

quarter A quarter is one-fourth, , 25% or 0.25. Quarter or quarters may refer to: Places * Quarter (urban subdivision), a section or area, usually of a town Placenames * Quarter, South Lanarkshire, a settlement in Scotland * Le Quartier, a settlement ...

History

The ''Hospice des Quinze-Vingts'', a hospital for the blind, was founded in 1260 by

Louis IX Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the d ...

, king of France, also known as "Saint Louis". It was constructed on a piece of land called "Champ-Pourri",J-A Delaure et Gabriel Roux, ''Histoire de Paris'', 1853, p. 132 an area lying a short distance west of the Louvre fortress, outside the fortified wall built by Philippe Augustus from 1190 to 1209. It became included within the city after the erection of the new fortified wall of Charles V built between 1356 and 1383. Within the new neighborhood thus formed west of the Louvre, it was located on ''

rue Saint-Honoré The rue Saint-Honoré is a street in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. It is named after the collegial situated in ancient times within the cloisters of Saint-Honoré. The street, on which are located a number of museums and upscale bou ...

'' at the corner of the ''rue Saint-Nicaise'', (in the area between the Palais-Royal and

Place du Carrousel The Place du Carrousel () is a public square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, located at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre Palace, a space occupied, prior to 1883, by the Tuileries Palace. Sitting directly between the museum and the Tu ...

, whose construction post-dated of several centuries that of the ''Quinze-Vingts)''. The name ''Quinze-Vingts'', which means three hundred (15 × 20 = 300), comes from the vigesimal (based on 20) numeral system used in the Middle Ages: it referred to the number of beds in the hospital, and was intended to house 300 poor, blind city-dwellers. In 1779, during the reign of king

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

, the

Cardinal de Rohan Louis René Édouard de Rohan known as Cardinal de Rohan (25 September 1734 – 16 February 1803), ''prince de Rohan-Guéméné'', was a French Bishop of Strasbourg, politician, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, and cadet of the Rohan f ...

transferred the hospital to its current location, ''rue de Charenton'', in the former barracks of the "Black Musketeers", (''Mousquetaires noirs'', named for the color of their horses), which had been disbanded in 1775. Rohan also changed the system of administration and increased the number of beds to eight hundred. In 1801, during the

Consulate A consulate is the office of a consul. A type of diplomatic mission, it is usually subordinate to the state's main representation in the capital of that foreign country (host state), usually an embassy (or, only between two Commonwealth c ...

, the hospital was housing the Institute for the Young Blind founded by

Valentin Haüy Valentin Haüy (pronounced ; 13 November 1745 – 19 March 1822) was the founder, in 1785, of the first school for the blind, the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris (now Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles, or the ''National Institute for th ...

in 1784. Between 1957 and 1968, large parts of the former barracks of Black Musketeers were demolished. What was left - entrance and chapel - was classified '' Monument historique'' (historical monument) on 26 December 1976. Up to this day the ''Quinze-Vingts'' remains a hospital for eye diseases. It also houses the

Vision Institute Built in the heart of the Quinze-Vingts National Eye Hospital in Paris, France, the Vision Institute (French: Institut de la Vision) is one of the most important research centers ( Inserm / UPMC / CNRS) in Europe on eye diseases. The Institute ...

(''Institut de la Vision''), an ophthalmology research center that opened in 2008.

Bibliography

Zina Weygand Zina Weygand (born April 23 1945) is a French historian and emeritus researcher at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. She obtained her PhD from University Paris 1 in 1998. Weygand is a specialist of disability history, especially t ...

, ''The Blind in French Society from the Middle Ages to the Century of Louis Braille'', Stanford University Press, 2009

References

External links

Official Web Site (in French)
{{authority control History of ophthalmology Eye hospitals Hospitals in Paris Louis IX of France