Maternité suisse d'Elne, World War II maternity hospital and museum in Elne, France

The Maternité Suisse d'Elne occupies the Château de Bardou, a three-storey mansion built in 1900 by architect Viggo Dorph-Petersen on the road to Montescot. Its central section is pale yellow masonry with tall glass panels and a wide stone staircase, flanked by red-brick wings banded with cream stone. A glass-panelled dome topped with an open metal canopy rises above the entrance, and a stone balustrade forms a terrace at the lower right.

Elisabeth Eidenbenz opened the maternity in the semi-abandoned Château de Bardou, built in 1900, after the first site at Brouilla became too small; the first child was born on 7 December 1939. Between 1939 and 1944, 597 children of Spanish refugee mothers interned in nearby camps were born here, and about 200 children of Jewish mothers during the Second World War. The Gestapo closed it in 1944.

The fifty beds were grouped in rooms of four to eight, each named after a city or country: Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Santander, Seville, Zaragoza, Paris, Switzerland, Poland and Morocco. The delivery room was a small white room with a bed, a table, a washbasin and a cupboard for the midwife's instruments.

The building stands on the road to Montescot, west of Elne and about 7 km from Argelès-sur-Mer. The museum is not in the town centre, so plan transport accordingly. The former maternity occupies a three-storey house with a glass-panelled dome and a wide stone staircase; the visit covers the rooms where mothers gave birth.

The building's history was forgotten until the 1990s, when a glass artisan bought it for his workshop and met Guy Eckstein, one of the children born there. Together they tracked down Elisabeth Eidenbenz, and in 2002 the city council paid her an institutional tribute.