Villemin - Mahsa Jîna Amini Garden

The Villemin Mahsa Jîna Amini Garden occupies a space with a long and layered history that predates its current life as a public park. The site began in the seventeenth century as a Franciscan convent, the Couvent des Récollets. By the nineteenth century, its strategic location near the major railway stations led to its conversion into a military hospital. This hospital served the wounded during the Franco-Prussian War and was later renamed to honor Jean-Antoine Villemin, a physician whose pioneering research proved that tuberculosis was a transmissible disease. Following the closure of the hospital in nineteen sixty-eight, the grounds were transformed into the green space you see today.