05.05.07

Heading South Part I: Lyon

Posted in Travel at 12:02 pm by rachel

We spent last week travelling south from Paris, to the Mediteranean Sea and then up through the mountains on the way back. I’m going to attempt to post an overview of the highlights, beginning today with our first stop: Lyon.

Lyon is one of my favorite cities in France. With two rivers (the Rhone and the Saône), majestic hilltops, gourmet food, and layer-upon-layer of archaeological history dating to 43 B.C., this third largest French city is well worth a visit. I find the architecture to be more interesting than Paris’s classic Haussmanian immeuble. Many lyonnais buildings are colorful and date back to medieval times, with winding staircases, arched windows, and open balconies. Rather than razing the old quarters, the Lyonnais simply added on to the city as the centuries progressed: two Roman theaters (over 2000 years old) still stand on Fourvière hill, with the medieval Saint-Jean area below, and 19th-century buildings and boulevards lay beyond the Saône.

The booming silk trade put Lyon on the map during the Renaissance, and the silk workers (called canuts) famously held uprisings there in the 1830s. Later in the 19th century, the appropriately-named Lumière brothers invented cinema in Lyon; there is a museum in their honor that traces the development of photography and cinema in France. Light plays an important part in the lyonnais cultural traditions: Since 1852, the 8 décembre feast of the Immaculate Conception has honored St. Mary with a festival of lights, which began with the popular tradition of placing votives in windows and has today evolved into a secularized, high-tech display of artistic lighting.

French children will find that Lyon’s most famous cultural contribution to be the creation of the Guignol puppet character. Guignol (often accompanied at times by his drunken friend) has entertained children since the beginning of the 19th century.

We only had a few hours in Lyon, so we focused on the heart of the city: beginning at the Saint-Jean Cathedral, we walked down rue du Boeuf and then up a very long staircase on the Fourvière hill. We then wound around the beautiful gardens on the hill and up to the late-19th-century Fourvière basilica, from which we had a breath-taking view of the city at sunset. After winding back down to Vieux Lyon, we walked by many bustling bouchons - traditional lyonnais restaurants serving classics like quenelles and saucisses. We then took a foot bridge over the Saône and made our way to Place Bellecour, the largest treeless plaza in Europe, with a statue of Louis XIV on horseback in the center. From the quays of the Saône we had a beautiful view of illuminated Vieux Lyon, with Saint-Jean in the foreground and Fourvière up above.

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