Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés

The Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés occupies a narrow space on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Its limestone facade features a small, stone wheel set into the wall near the entrance. Mothers in desperate circumstances once placed their infants into this box from the street, turned it, and left them for the nuns inside to collect. This institution accepted thousands of abandoned children each year, keeping the city’s youngest residents alive when their families could no longer feed them.