PARIS — Since housing its first former soldiers in 1674, the National Institution of the Invalides has tracked the long arc of French military history, from the wars of Louis XIV through the Napoleonic campaigns to the conflicts of the 21st century. This month, the institution — world-famous as the resting place of Napoleon beneath its soaring golden dome — granted rare access to Associated Press reporters, revealing a working hospital that the 1.4 million tourists who visited the tomb museum last year rarely see.
Built under Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, the Invalides was conceived as “a communication tool to the entire world,” said Gen. Christophe de Saint Chamas, a military officer who serves as the institution’s governor. Louis XIV intended the grand complex to be a visible testament that the French state would care for its old soldiers.
“Above all, it was an act of gratitude from the state,” de Saint Chamas told AP. “Actually, the first social gesture of the state. Before that, religious communities were taking in the wounded, by obligation. Here, the state said: we’re taking care of them, over the long term, until their death.”
The Invalides was stormed during the 1789 Revolution by crowds seeking firearms, housed thousands of veterans under Napoleon, and, in the 20th century, opened its doors to civilian victims of war — a category that now includes survivors of the Holocaust.
Among the current residents are Ginette Kolinka, 101, and Esther Senot, 98, both survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp who have spoken extensively about their experiences to students and the public.
Senot, born to Polish Jewish parents, was 15 years old when French police arrested her in Paris. She was deported by cattle train in September 1943. “On the transport we left on, out of 1,000 people, only two of us returned,” Senot said. She survived 17 months in Nazi camps, returning to France weighing 32 kilograms — about 70 pounds — having lost 17 members of her family, including her parents and six siblings.
In postwar France, Senot encountered indifference and disbelief about the fate of deportees. She began telling her story publicly after a visit to Auschwitz in 1985, when she challenged a guide’s account that ignored the fact that most victims of the Nazi camps were Jewish. “The people who were in my group said to me, ‘Madam, is it true that you were there?’ I said yes,” Senot recalled, showing the number tattooed on her left arm. “And then they asked me, ‘Would you mind explaining this to us?’”
Senot chose the Invalides as her home after her husband died and as she faced her own medical issues. Her brother, a veteran of the French 2nd Armored Division that helped liberate France, had lived at the institution for 10 years earlier in the century. “I used to come and see him regularly, and at the time, of course, it was wonderful,” she said. “As I grew older and found myself alone, since I already knew quite a few people … I came here.”
The institution’s military residents include those injured in more recent operations. Master Corporal Mikaele Iva, who was injured in a parachute accident in Gabon in 2021 and now uses a wheelchair, lives at the Invalides and represents the institution at national ceremonies. He described the bonds formed among residents as they gather in common spaces or attend sports events and concerts together.
“It has truly become our second family,” Iva said. “We support each other in difficult times, because we have to get back on our feet despite our injuries; we have to keep helping one another no matter what.”
Mustapha Nachet, a nurse coordinator at the residents’ center since 2014, said 64 residents currently live on site, requiring highly individualized care. “A 30-year-old wounded veteran does not have the same needs or aspirations as a 99-year-old civilian war victim,” Nachet said. “We devote ourselves to them body and soul. It is the nation’s way of giving back for everything they have done.”
The hospital operates as a specialized center for severe disabilities, with expertise in prosthetics, rehabilitation, and mobility research. Medical teams treated victims of the 2015 terrorist attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, Paris cafes, and the national stadium.
Gen. Sylvain Ausset, director of the National Institution of the Invalides, described how physicians across centuries have observed the changing wounds of war. “In World War I, severe facial injuries appeared,” he said. “They had existed before, but people simply did not survive. In World War II, paraplegic and quadriplegic patients with spinal cord injuries began to survive. In more recent conflicts in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan, multiple amputations emerged on a scale never seen before. And today, the defining injury is psychological trauma.”
The ongoing renovation — estimated at 100 million euros, about $108 million — is funded by the French state, with private donors invited to sponsor individual rooms. The Invalides governor said the nation’s commitment to its wounded endures.
“It allows active-duty troops to deploy knowing that if something happens to them,” de Saint Chamas said, “France will be there.”