Hospitality of Aziza Othmana
Several hospitals were located in the nineteenth century in the medina of Tunis. Transferred outside the historic city, they still exist today.
How can we approach the history of hospitals in the medina of Tunis without first mentioning the current Aziza Othmana hospital? This institution reserved for Tunisians of the Muslim faith was created under the name Sadiki Hospital in 1893 and was established in the buildings of a former Ottoman barracks built in the eighteenth century.
Today, this hospital is the most important in the medina and has expanded by annexing several other buildings like the Youssef Dey Madrasa.
In the past, the medina counted on another health establishment: the Saint-Louis hospital which was created by Abbot François Bourgade in 1843 and which was installed in another former Ottoman barracks on rue Sidi Ali Azzouz.
Note also the presence of an Italian hospital, the Ospedale coloniale italiano which was located on Zaouia El Bokria Street and had been established in 1890. Let us also mention the Jewish hospital which had been installed in the former Khaznadar Palace between Bab Souika and Halfaouine.
Most of these health establishments were transferred outside the medina at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus the Saint-Louis hospital was the embryo of what would become the French civil hospital on the heights of Rabta.
Likewise, the current Habib Thameur hospital has long been the Italian hospital of Tunis, born in the wake of the Italian colonial Ospedale.
Furthermore, it was also at the end of the nineteenth century that a military hospital was opened in 1886 in the current district of El Omrane. Finally, it was in 1904 that the Pasteur Institute was installed in the premises it continues to occupy at Belvédère.
