Hôpital Tenon is identifiable by the sprawling, utilitarian brick buildings that span the hillside of the twentieth arrondissement. Originally commissioned as a charitable hospice in the eighteen seventies, it was designed to relocate patients from the crowded, plague-ridden centers of Paris to the fresh air of the Belleville heights. Doctor Jacques Tenon, a surgeon who pushed for better hospital ventilation, gave the site its name. Surgeons here once operated under natural light pouring through massive, north-facing glass panes before electricity became common.
Hôpital Tenon
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