Hôpital Bretonneau

The Hôpital Bretonneau displays a long, rhythmic facade of red brick and white stone, unmistakable among the surrounding residential blocks of the eighteenth arrondissement. Opened in nineteen hundred and one, it was built to replace the crumbling old buildings of the Hôpital de Lourcine. A young doctor named Alexandre Yersin worked within these walls before his discovery of the bubonic plague bacillus in Hong Kong. The site remains a place of active medical care, continuing its century of service to the local neighborhood.