Army thermal hospital, Military thermal hospital in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, France

The Army thermal hospital is a group of hospital buildings, baths and annexes built by the Ministry of War between 1847 and 1886 in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda. Three buildings stand in a U around a garden, within a wooded park; the walls are limestone rubble, with cayrou and sandstone around doors and windows. Behind them lies the single-storey bath complex with three pools, nine shower rooms, nine baths and four inhalation rooms.

The French Ministry of War built this thermal healing facility between 1847 and 1886 to provide treatment for military personnel using mineral waters. The long construction period shows how the site gradually developed into a complete medical complex.

The site's name recalls its military use: soldiers and officers were treated here free of charge until the hospital closed in 1993. Each 10 November, a procession for the Fête des Morts set off from the hospital park toward the town hall. A war memorial was built in 1946 in front of the chapel.

The site is closed and was described in 2019 as abandoned and overgrown, so it is not visitable as a care facility. The hospital complex stands in a wooded park above a rough stone retaining wall, with the thermal baths in a single-storey block behind it. The entrance opens onto an axial corridor crossed at its midpoint by a second corridor on the buildings' long axis.

The 1862 account by Dr Génieys records that the central building's dormitories held sixteen beds each and could be made independent in case of an epidemic. The same description notes a fountain jet rising twelve metres in the tree-planted courtyard between the wings.