Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin

The Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin keep their Paris house at Maison Saint-Charles, 310 rue de Vaugirard, in the city's 15th arrondissement. The site pairs more than a century and a half of charitable and educational history with a recent transformation into an open, mixed-generation social residence.

Where exactly is the sisters' house in Paris?

Maison Saint-Charles sits on rue de Vaugirard in the 15th arrondissement. Four buildings are arranged around a shared garden, linked by a glazed walkway that gives the courtyard the shape of a cloister. About 3,600 square metres of green space remain on the plot, including most of the century-old trees that predate the recent renovation.

How did this house come about?

The site's story begins in 1862, when the priest Joseph-Charles Bayle founded an orphanage there. In 1872 the Sisters of Notre-Dame des Anges took over its care and built the neo-Gothic chapel that still stands today. In 1966 their congregation merged with the Dominican Sisters of Charity of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and from that point the rue de Vaugirard property has belonged to the present community. Over the following decades the building served in turn as a hospital, an orphanage, a primary school, and a boarding school for disadvantaged children.

Who are the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation?

The congregation was founded in 1696 at Sainville, in the Eure-et-Loir region, by Marie Poussepin, a Dominican tertiary later beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1994. From its beginnings, the sisters' mission combined care for the sick with teaching, with a stated preference for the poor. The community was formally aggregated to the Dominican Order in 1959. As of 2017, the congregation counted 2,106 sisters living in 288 houses spread across Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia.

What does the building look like today?

In the early 2010s the congregation decided to turn the ageing complex into a place serving the wider neighbourhood rather than the sisters alone. After an architectural competition and a public consultation with local residents, construction ran from 2018 to 2021, and the site was officially inaugurated in September 2022. Architect Bruno Le Moal restored the chapel, while new stained-glass windows depicting mimosa flowers, made using a 16th-century technique, were designed by artist Matthieu Gasc. The sisters also leased part of the land to a property developer for a separate residential building, under a construction lease running until 2063.

Maison Saint-Charles now holds 47 social housing units, twenty of them occupied by the sisters and the rest by families and individuals in need of support. There are also two shared flats for intergenerational living, roughly fifteen guest rooms run as social tourism accommodation, meeting rooms and co-working space for social-economy entrepreneurs, a library, and a café. Around forty volunteers help run the site on a daily basis.

Can visitors tour the site?

Maison Saint-Charles is not a conventional tourist attraction but an active residence and religious community. Access to the interior, including the chapel, depends on rules set by Habitat et Humanisme Île-de-France, which manages the site, and by the sisters themselves.

Frequently asked questions

Do the sisters still live on site? Yes, twenty sisters occupy part of the renovated complex.

Can visitors stay in the guest rooms? The site offers around fifteen rooms run as social tourism accommodation, mainly intended for people facing financial hardship and their families.

How old is the site? An orphanage has stood here since 1862; the current congregation took it over in 1966 following the merger of two religious communities.

What does the congregation do worldwide? It focuses on caring for the sick and on education, following the charism set out by its founder, Marie Poussepin, at the end of the 17th century.