Top 10 Facts about Vieille Charité

Image by Jddmano from Wikimedia

Top 10 Facts about Vieille Charité

A   sad fact about Vielle Charite is that historically it was the place used to lock up the beggars of the city.The Vieille Charité is naturally located in the heart of the Le Panier district, which is the historic city centre. It was constructed between 1671 and 1749. The complex also contains museums, which is natural for a place steeped in history like this one. 

The Vieille Charité is also a magnificent building in its own right and well worth seeing even if you don’t visit any of its permanent or temporary exhibitions.

The man behind it was the Marseille-born architect Pierre Paul Puget. The Vieille Charité started life as a poorhouse with a capacity of 600 beds. But, despite its benevolent-sounding name, it was effectively a prison used to detain the growing number of beggars, tramps and homeless people pouring into Marseille in the mid-18th century. Here are the top 10 facts about Vieille Charite.

1.  Vieille Charité, a Homeless Shelter Turned Museum

image Ddeveze from Wikimedia

The building was created in 1640 when the Town Council of Marseilles decided to give the poor local inhabitants a decent place to reside, in compliance with a royal policy of “enclosing the poor.”

In 1749, a three-floor public hospital with four wings was added to the building. There is a chapel in the centre courtyard of the hospital complex. Built from 1679 to 1707, the chapel is a wonderful example of Italian baroque architecture.

The facade of the Vieille Charité is more modern, dating from 1863. Upon close observation, visitors will notice the depiction of two pelicans feeding their young, to represent Charity looking after poor children. Presently the complex also contains 4 museums, a must for a place steeped in history like this one.

2. The Original Resident of Vieille Charite was Forced to Stay

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It all began in 1640, with a Royal Edict aimed at “locking up the poor and beggars”, and the municipality decided to build the Vieille Charité to house them.

In the seventeenth century, the repression of beggars was conducted with great brutality in France. Guards called Chasse-gueux (“beggar-hunters”) had the task of rounding up beggars: non-residents among them were expelled from Marseille and natives of Marseille were put up in this prison-like home. Often the crowd would take the side of the beggars during such arrests.

The almshouse also served as workhouses for the beggars. Children were made to jobs as domestic servants, cabin boys or apprentices with seamstresses or bakers. As time passed the work of la Vielle Charité grew and the number of inmates increased from 850 in 1736 to 1059 in 1760. As the imprisonment of the poor became less acceptable, the numbers decreased to 250 in 1781.

3.  Vieille Charite was Designed by Architect Pierre Puget 

The “Vieille Charité” is a historical monument with exceptional architecture. Its construction began in 1670. It was built by Pierre Puget, who was the king’s architect and had grown up in the district.

The idea of an almshouse for the poor, dedicated to Notre-Dame, mère de Charité (Our Lady, Mother of Charity), was originally conceived in 1622; but it was not until 1640 that a suitable plot of land was acquired, with the first pensioners admitted in the following year.

Although the foundation stone was laid in that year, construction commenced only in 1671, following a grand plan of the architect Pierre Puget.  It was  until 1749, construction was delayed by the aldermen of Marseille.

The central chapel was erected between 1679 and 1704. Puget died in 1694 necessitating part of the project to be completed under the direction of his son, François.

4. Le Cobusier saved Vieille Charite

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Almost abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century, it was Le Corbusier who informed the municipality about the deteriorating building. It, therefore, decided to restore it. In 1951, the chapel and hospice were classified as historic monuments. And in 1961, restoration work began and lasted almost 25 years after all residents had been relocated.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930.

Dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities, Le Corbusier was influential in urban planning and was a founding member of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM).

5. Vieille Charite is Home to 4 Museums

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Today Vieille Charite is a multidisciplinary centre promoting science and culture. It  hosts the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology and the Museum of African, Oceanic, and Amerindian Arts. The rectangular form of the buildings comprises four wings which open onto a courtyard, of which the centrepiece is a beautiful domed chapel in Italian baroque style.

Since 1986, the Vieille Charité building has been used to host scientific and cultural events and to house a museum, Le Centre de la Vieille Charité. This museum presents cultural events, ethnographic exhibits, and themed art expositions throughout the year.

The Museum of Mediterranean Archeology (MAM) has a very fine array of ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan relics, the largest in France apart from that in the Louvre and a room devoted to Egypt with funerary relics and a splendid papyrus Book of the Dead.

Musée des Arts Africains, Oceaniens et Amérindiens (MAAOA) an eclectic array of ethnographic art from Africa, Oceania and Latin and Southern America. It includes a small but striking set of 19th-century African masks, popular Mexican crafts and a mysterious Oceanic room. These collections are the largest in France, outside of Paris.

6.  Vieille Charite  is an Example of Religious Architecture

Image by Phillipe Ales from Wikimedia

La Vielle Charité is an outstanding example of religious architecture from 17th-century France. It was designed by Pierre Puget, the King’s architect and also native to the area.

The main body of the structure is a rectangle, 112 m by 96 m, composed of four walls in pink and yellow-tinted limestone from the ancient quarries at Cap Couronne, with no outward-facing windows. On the inside are three arcaded galleries superposed on each other, opening onto an interior courtyard measuring 82 m by 45 m.

In the centre of the courtyard is a harmonious chapel, a round church, crowned by an ellipsoidal dome and fronted by a portico in the classical style with Corinthian columns. This Baroque chapel ranks as one of Puget’s most original designs.

7.  Vieille Charite after the French Revolution

Spared during the French Revolution, the building was used as an asylum for “les vagabonds et les gens sans aveu” (vagrants and the dispossessed) in the nineteenth century. It was transformed into a barracks for the French Foreign Legion until 1922.

Then it was used to lodge those displaced by the demolition of the district behind the Bourse and later those made homeless by the dynamiting of the Old Port during the Second World War. Plagued by squatters, pillagers and vandals, it eventually housed 146 families living in squalid and unsafe conditions.

A group of around 30 Little Sisters of Jesus also lived in equally abject conditions to their charges, and various small concerns, devoted amongst other things to transport, packing of anchovies and ripening of bananas.

8. Vieille Charite’s Restoration

Image by Ddeveze from Wikimedia

The Malraux laws resulted in the restoration work on the Vieille Charite in 1968. Since 1986 the building has fulfilled a variety of scientific and cultural functions, housing museums and hosting temporary exhibitions.

Established in 1962 by André Malraux, the Malraux Law allows for deduction of tax on the amount used for the restoration of classified property. This system appeals to private investors to rehabilitate the “Patrimoine de France” that is French heritage.

In 1962 all the residents were rehoused and the building shut down. It was only in 1968, thanks to the intervention of the Minister of Culture André Malraux, that funds became available to rescue the buildings, by then in a state of total dereliction. Between 1970 and 1986, La Vieille Charité was  restored to its former glory the work on the chapel was completed in 1981.

9. Vieille Charite hosts an International Poetry Centre

The Centre international de la poésie de Marseille, is dedicated to the creation and dissemination of contemporary poetry. The centre international de poésie Marseille aims to promote and facilitate the circulation of contemporary poetry and literature and work at connecting writing, visual arts and music. The residencies are of a creative nature.

Foreign poets on residency are given lodgings in Marseille, while their French counterparts are placed in other Mediterranean towns like Tangiers in Morocco; Sidon or Beirut in Lebanon. In an effort to make its residents’ work known, the association organizes public readings and publishes authors’ texts in the “Refuge” Collection. The publication is 40 pages long.

The CIPM also publishes a critics’ journal, the cahier Critique de Poésie, twice a year. Residents are invited to present their piece of work in the context of a reading set up during their stay.

10.  A World Leading Centre for Anthropology can be found at Vieille Charite

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The Centre Norbert Elias is a globally recognized research centre in anthropology, sociology and the history of social dynamics. The Centre Norbert Elias gathers researchers from different disciplines, all of whom are convinced that the humanities and social sciences are complementary.

The laboratory is located on the EHESS Marseille campus at the Vieille Charité and on the Hannah Arendt campus at Avignon University. It brings together 50 researchers, 80 PhD students and a 10-person-strong support team working on the analysis and description of social worlds.

Hailing from different intellectual trajectories, the researchers’ interests span multiple sociological and historical theories and references. They share a conception of the social sciences in which inquiry, both in the archives and the field, is an essential characteristic.

Over the next four years (2019-2022), research will focus on the following four themes: 1) places of politics, 2) kinship and family, 3) ecologies and care, and 4) forms and processes of culture.

The Centre de la Vieille Charité is located in the centre of Marseille in the Panier district. It’s a short walk from the Old Port, and the closest metro station is Joliette, approximately 10 minutes on foot.