A place of welcome for all time
From far off, the Bonne-Mère keeps vigil over the visitors’ slumber. But long before now, for more than one hundred and fifty years, she watched over the health of hundreds of thousands of others. The Hôtel-Dieu which stands facing her, constructed by Claude-Henri-Jacques d'Aggeville, a native of Marseille, according to the plans drawn up by the king’s architect, Jacques Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, indeed received the inhabitants of the Phoenician City from its opening in 1753 until 2006, before its transformation into a hotel and private apartments in 2013. A rehabilitation led by, among others, Jean-Philippe Nuel, together with the manufacturers Henryot & Cie, Petite Friture, Ligne Roset, Philippe Hurel, and Rosello.
An evolving hospital
Various interventions changed the appearance of the hospital as time went by, such as the addition of stairways designed by Esprit-Joseph Brun (1781), or the re-structuring and the extension by Félix Blanchet and François-Joseph Nolau (1866), who gave it more or less the appearance we see today, by extending the left wing of the courtyard, erecting the pavilions at the ends of the two wings and raising the whole building by one floor, while clearing the surrounding area to give it air and light and improve its accessibility. Until then, indeed, outsiders and the sick were taken in on litters or in sedan chairs…
Inversed layout
More than a century later, the challenge to transform the site into a hotel establishment, (including 85 private apartments) has also brought the opportunity to renew the ties between the former hospital enclosure and its city with a series of surrounding urban re-developments. To adapt the Hôtel-Dieu for its future calling, it was necessary to inverse the original functional lay-out: “The galleries that once provided the access to the communal rooms have been transformed into spacious private loggias for each of the bedrooms, now laid out along a corridor created on the north side,” explains the architect Anthony Béchu.
Highlight
“Where once there was the roof of the former emergency services, a vast panoramic terrace now houses the seminar complex, an exhibition gallery and the administrative services, on either side of the central lobby”, the architect continues. “The great zenithal glass roof which illuminates it, vividly highlights, through a low-angle view, the architecture inherited from the past centuries. The same is true for the pedestrian and automobile access ways which have been re-designed in such a way as to restore all its nobility to this superb heritage of Marseille."
Putting dialogue first
Facing each other, the bar and the brasserie, extended by a terrace with a view over the Vieux-Port and Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, benefit from very high ceilings, in a change of scale which forms part of the richness of the project. History speaks to us there through the 17th century paintings illustrating the bay of Marseille and through the use of blue, the city’s traditional colour, for the seating.
Contemporary re-interpretation
In the bedrooms, there’s also a myriad of reminders of the Phoenician magic and of the original function of the site: some bathrooms are opened and closed with slatted shutter effects, evoking the façades so typical of the city; the baths in enamelled cast-iron are a vestige of the past which form a foil for the modernity of the wooden fittings; the white leather bedheads evoke classic beds in a contemporary reinterpretation, like the coverlet, where the embroidered motif has been inspired by Provencal tradition. The Bonne-Mère is quite right: sleep is sacred.
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