InterContinental Marseille Hotel Dieu, Marseille

The InterContinental Marseille-Hotel Dieu is a five star luxury hotel that has been in operation since 2013. But it was not always a hotel. The building has served Marseille as a hospital for over eight hundred years.

It occupies the site of the Saint-Esprit Hospital which was opened in 1188. For six hundred years the hospital underwent several alterations until 1866 when the present building was inaugurated by Napoleon III. In 1963, the hospital was designated a registered national monument.

The ancient hospital became a luxury hotel in 2003. It has 172 rooms with prices going as high as $6,000 USD or more. It still bears the name Hotel-Dieu, a spiritual reference to its mercy days. In 1993 the Hospital stopped receiving patients and converted to a teaching hospital.

The Hospital saw continuous service to the city for 825 years. Through pandemics, wars, revolutions and sufferings of every kind. The Hotel Dieu is now actually a hotel, offering a different kind of refuge to the city of Marseille.