Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin

One of Europe's largest and most historically significant university hospitals, founded in Berlin in 1710 as a quarantine facility for plague victims outside the city's gates. After the epidemic threat passed, the site became a hospice and, from 1727, a military hospital and training center, at which point King Friedrich Wilhelm I gave it the name Charite. In 2003 it merged with the university hospital of the Freie Universitat Berlin to become a single joint medical faculty and hospital of both Humboldt University and the Freie Universitat, today one of the largest hospital complexes in Europe.