Chapelle de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, Baroque chapel in Bellecour district, Lyon, France.
The Chapelle de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, also called Notre-Dame-de-Pitié, stands on place de l'Hôpital within the Hôtel-Dieu complex. Its Baroque facade has two flanking towers with dark pointed tops and gold finials, a large arched window with scroll tracery, and a panel inscribed "LE GRAND HOSTEL DIEV" above a carved relief and wooden double door. Inside, two tribunes in the choir face the nave, one for religious and one for hospital patients.
Construction of this chapel started in 1637 under architect Guillaume Ducellet and was delayed by a plague outbreak before completion in 1655. The project was part of equipping an adjacent hospital and reflects the religious importance placed on such institutions in that century.
The chapel is dedicated to Notre-Dame de Pitié, and its choir holds two tribunes, one for the religious and one for hospitalised patients, so they could follow services separately. The name Hôtel-Dieu comes from the hospital complex it serves, run by the Hospices civils de Lyon. The 1633 Virgin and Child by Jacques Mimerel survived the Revolution hidden away.
The chapel stands on place de l'Hôpital inside the Hôtel-Dieu complex, and its main entrance opens onto the street rather than into the hospital. Two tribunes face the choir, one for religious and one for hospitalised patients. The building is classified as a monument historique, the architecture since 1941 and the furnishings since 1983.
Between 1940 and 1967, around 62,000 children were baptised in this chapel, which had fallen into neglect after Tony Garnier's plan to demolish most of the Hôtel-Dieu was abandoned. The marble baptismal font was restored in the 2012-2015 campaign, the first restoration in 150 years.
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