Boulevard de l'Hôpital
The boulevard de l'Hôpital is a tree-lined boulevard of the 13th arrondissement of Paris, which also briefly borders on the 5th arrondissement. It runs a distance of 1,395 meters, from the Place Valhubert at the pont d'Austerlitz, by the gare d'Austerlitz, rising in a gentle slope towards its end at the place d'Italie - the town hall of the arrondissement being located at their intersection. Along the way, it serves the Jardin des Plantes and the Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière from which it derives its name. In front of the hospital stands a statue of doctor  Philippe Pinel. The boulevard is an important traffic axis. Bordered by public and teaching establishments such as the general police station of the arrondissement, it has relatively little commercial and leisure activity excepting the shops and restaurants close to the gare d'Austerlitz. The boulevard is also home to the Arts et Métiers ParisTech main campus. This engineering graduate school built its facilities in 1910, at this time it was called ENSAM. Nowadays, more than 950 graduate students are attending courses in fields such as industrial or mechanical engineering. The métro Line 5 runs through the Austerlitz viaduct, along the boulevard  which has four stations: History. The boulevard is one of the "Boulevards du midi" of Louis XIV, constructed to supplement the band of boulevards already completed on the right bank of the Seine. However, the work advanced very slowly and the boulevard only finally opened in 1760. It was then the start of the road to Fontainebleau, which followed the course of the present avenue d'Italie. In the projects for the restoration of Paris in the post-war period (the 1959 town-planning directive), it was intended that the boulevard de l'Hôpital be integrated into an expressway crossing Paris from  south to north, which would have joined the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir on the right bank. However, this plan was never implemented, so the layout of the boulevard has scarcely changed from the original. Composition. The odd-numbered buildings are on the Gare d'Austerlitz/Pitié-Salpêtrière (eastern) side of the boulevard and the even-numbered buildings on the opposite (western) side.