Centre de la Vieille Charité
Pierre Puget's serene baroque almshouse hidden in the Panier old town, three storeys of pale arcades wrapped around a domed pink-stone chapel. Built to confine the city's poor, it is now a museum complex and the architectural jewel of old Marseille.
Über diesen Ort
The Vieille Charité is the finest piece of architecture in Marseille's old town, a quiet courtyard ringed by three storeys of pale stone arcades with an oval-domed chapel standing at its centre like a jewel. It was designed by Pierre Puget, the great Marseille-born sculptor and architect, with construction beginning in 1671 and continuing for much of the following century. Despite its beauty it was built as an almshouse, a place to gather and confine the city's beggars and homeless, so its serene galleries once enclosed real hardship. By the twentieth century it had fallen into ruin, and it was saved largely thanks to the architect Le Corbusier, whose advocacy helped it be classified a historic monument in 1951 and restored over some twenty-five years. Today it is a cultural centre housing museums of Mediterranean archaeology and of African, Oceanian and Amerindian art.
Wissenswertes
- 1671 year — Construction began to designs by the Marseille sculptor Pierre Puget
- 1951 year — Classified a historic monument, saved through Le Corbusier's advocacy
- 3 storeys — Of arcaded galleries surround the central domed chapel
📍 Rue de la Charité 2, 13002, Marseille