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La Vieille Charité

La Vieille Charité is a former almshouse for beggars, built between 1671 and 1749 in Baroque style to a design by the architect Pierre Puget, in the heart of the old Panier district of Marseille. Listed as a historic monument since 29 January 1951, the building is arranged in four wings with three tiers of arcaded galleries surrounding an interior courtyard measuring 82 by 45 metres, with walls of pink and yellowish molasse stone from the old Cap Couronne quarries and no windows facing outward. At the centre of the courtyard stands a circular chapel, topped by an ellipsoidal dome and preceded by a classical portico with Corinthian columns, considered one of Puget's most original works. After a long period of decline, the building was restored between 1970 and 1986, with the restoration of the chapel completed in 1981. It now houses the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology, with Eastern and Classical antiquities and local Celto-Ligurian archaeology, and the Museum of African, Oceanian and Amerindian Art, with masks from Mexico and West Africa and a unique collection of carved human skulls and trophy heads from South America. It is also home to a regional centre of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the Centre Norbert Elias research centre, La Fabrique des écritures, a research library specialising in social sciences and visual anthropology, the Centre International de Poésie Marseille, temporary exhibition spaces and a café. Its programme includes large-scale temporary exhibitions, such as the 2023 retrospective devoted to the Algerian artist Baya, co-produced with the Institut du monde arabe, and Adrien Vescovi's monumental textile installation created for the chapel and galleries.

Near La Vieille Charité

Source: vieille-charite-marseille.com