Audioguides for children

You are about to visit one of France's finest and largest Hôtel-Dieu hospitals, which has been a listed historical monument since 2011.

It is a place whose name – hostel of God – invokes both hospitality and charity.

It is a place where, since the 12th century, the destitute and sick have been welcomed and cared for without charge. By taking care of the sick, Christ's suffering was cared for.

You can visit this exceptional complex in whatever order you wish. We do advise you though to visit chronologically starting with the oldest part of the complex, the Chapel, the cloisters and Cour Saint Louis, before moving on to the three 18th century courtyards and finally the Cour du Midi, dating from the 19th century.

The chapel opposite you is part of the second hospital that was built four hundred years ago. It was attended by hospital personnel as well as by the patients who were able to leave their beds. The chapel was built in the 17th century in the baroque style architecture popular at the time. Its decorations celebrate the greatness of God, the Virgin Mary and the Saints. Like many churches, the building is constructed in the shape of a cross, in remembrance of the cross on which Jesus died. The large windows have colourless rather than stained glass to let more light in during mass. Works on the Chapel took more than 10 years to complete because of the plague. The architect Guillaume Ducellet died of the plague before the facade and several parts of the church were finished. He was replaced by Pierre Le Muet. Look closely at the detail on the frontage. Have you noticed the large sculptures? What can you see on each side of the columns? There are fruits and vegetables hanging out of an open mouth. And above is a small head pulling faces. All these decorations have nothing to do with religion. It is rare to see this many in a church, but it isn't really surprising because the chapel was financed by the Mayors of the city, that is, laymen and not the Church itself. More than 30,000 children who were born in the Hôtel-Dieu have been baptised in the Chapel since the Second World War. Every year, one child was even used in a living nativity scene on Christmas day.

This is the Cour du Cloître, which is French for Cloisters. It is the oldest courtyard in Hôtel-Dieu. It stands on the cemetery of the medieval hospital which no longer exists. A more modern hospital was built on the cemetery in the 17th century. It was shaped liked a cross with a dome in the middle that was known as the "dome des quatre rang" or the "four-wing dome". If you look up you can still see it. The plans for the building were inspired by Milan's hospital, the Policlinico, whose design was revolutionary at the time because it prevented the spread of contagious diseases. Men were separated from women and contagious patients were separated from those getting better. Above all, the central dome was a way of ventilating the air. The dome extracted air full of germs from the wards housing sick patients and discharged the infected air outside. It was also used as a chapel where patients could attend mass without leaving their beds. Sit in the middle of the garden and look at the windows on the first floor. These are the windows of the hospital wards. The windows are very tall and high off the floor because the patients' beds were placed just underneath them. This meant the windows could be opened to ventilate the room without the patients lying in a draught. Now let's look at the cloisters and have a good look under the arcades. Some have hand engraved inscriptions. These are the marks of the stonemasons and they indicate the number of stones the mason had cut that day. The more stones the masons cut, the better they were paid. Further along on the wall to your right, you can see plates with names on them. These are the names of the people who donated money to finance hospitals in Lyon.

This is the only courtyard in the hospital where you can see the first and second hospital buildings. The oldest, dating from the 17th century, is to your left. The one built in the 18th century by the architect Soufflot is to your right. The floors are at different levels depending on the dates when they were built. Those of the more recent hospital are higher, because the buildings were raised to prevent them being flooded. Cour Saint Louis was once a vegetable garden and has always been the greenest courtyard in Hôtel Dieu. The fountain in the middle is almost 200 years old. Another older one can be seen in Cour Saint Elizabeth.

You have just entered Cour Saint Henri which is the hospital’s main Courtyard, or the Courtyard of Honour. It was designed by the famous architect Soufflot when he extended Hôtel-Dieu in the 18th century. Soufflot also designed the magnificent 250 metre-long frontage; that's the equivalent of two football pitches. At the time Lyon was governed by consuls. They commissioned Soufflot to build this exceptional monument because they wanted travellers to leave the city with everlasting memories. Remember to take time to look at the front of the building with your parents at the end of your visit. In the meantime, stop for a few moments by the columns. The Grand Dôme is in front of you. It is right in the centre of the long facade and used to be the entrance for important visitors. Soufflot was only 27 years old when he designed this building, but he was full of daring ideas as he had just finished studying in Rome. On either side of the dome, which was also a chapel, were the wards for the sick. The patients could therefore attend mass without having to leave their beds. Prayers were often held in Hôtel Dieu, and not just for the patients. The sisters working on the wards also prayed regularly. If you look to your right, you can see some stained glass windows. Behind the windows was the refectory where the sisters ate in silence whilst one of them read the bible out loud. The sisters lived on the hospital grounds 24 hours a day.

This is the smallest courtyard of the hospital, one of the few where a modern building stands. In the past there was a psychiatric asylum here that was called the madmen's lodge. In those days the mentally ill were locked up like prisoners. The asylum was demolished about 100 years ago and replaced first by a boiler room to heat the hospital, then later by this modern building. Have you noticed the pretty fountain with the small roof, just opposite? It is a water fountain with a pump that was used for washing clothes and cleaning. The triangular trough was hand cut out of a single block of stone. There used to be pumps like this in each of the courtyards. Hôtel Dieu was actually like a small town. It had its own grocers, wine stores, shops selling cloth, linen services and so on. The services were used by the patients as well as the doctors and nurses looking after them. Only the hospital directors, called rectors, lived outside the hospital grounds.

In this courtyard is one of the treasures of Hôtel Dieu: the great staircase, in French the "Escalier d'Honneur". If you entered from the Saint Elizabeth courtyard, it is on your left. If you entered from Cour du Midi, it is in front of you. The staircase is one of the finest from that period in history. It is also the only large staircase that led to the sick wards. At that time there were no bedrooms on the ground floor because of the risk of flooding. The sick were always on the first floor and the shops and services underneath. Have you noticed that there are arcades all around the ground floor of this courtyard? They provided shelter from the rain when moving patients from one building to another. Go to the centre of the courtyard for a moment and stand facing the Rhône. If you look to your left, you can see the whole series of the Grand Hôtel’s courtyards. You can see during your visit that this hospital has been steadily extended over the years because there was never enough room. Not very long ago, there were even barracks for sick children in this courtyard. This quite understandably shocked many people. Especially as this courtyard was used as an entrance by all the ambulances.

You are now standing in the Cour du Midi, which is the most modern courtyard in Grand Hôtel-Dieu. It dates from the 19th century when the hospital was extended for the 3rd time. The courtyard was designed by a famous architect from Lyon, Paul Pascalon. Go to the large door leading on to the street and have a look around you. It is difficult to imagine that this lively place was once the courtyard for the dead. This is where the patients were brought who could not be cured and had died at the hospital. There would have been horse-drawn hearses and stables with hay. There was also a medical school where students could come to examine corpses so they could learn about anatomy. Now look up through the glass roof. The bell tower you can see is hiding something. If you could climb it you would be able to see that underneath the stone the architect used wrought iron to support the structure, the same as for the Eiffel tower. This isn't surprising because the two towers were built at the same period. Wrought iron was popular then because it was strong and light. It was a very modern building material. Let's end our visit with the most recent sections of the courtyard. The architects who restored Hôtel Dieu wanted it to be modern without forgetting the history of the site. For instance the glass roof in the courtyard is virtually the same as the one in an old gallery in the hospital. The gallery doesn't exist any more but it used to contain shops, like you can see here. As for the modern building on your left, it closes the courtyard because in the past the courtyard was enclosed like all the others in hospital. That is why there are four buildings identical to this one, on one of the facades of the Hôtel Dieu.