The Mères Lyonnaises
Lyon’s standing as one of the world’s finest gastronomic destinations is in no small part down to the Mères Lyonnaises, or “Mothers of Lyon”. Originally house cooks for the middle and upper classes, many of these women ultimately became surplus to requirements, so instead opened up their own businesses, serving food that combined grand bourgeoisie cuisine with more humble fare of the kind you might find in a bouchon, hence dishes such as pullet hen with black truffles, and pike quenelle casserole. Leading the way were women like Mère Fillioux and Mère Eugene Brazier, the latter establishing her eponymous restaurant (see The Mères Lyonnaises) on rue Royale, which is also where Paul Bocuse completed his apprenticeship.
The Presqu’île
The Presqu’île, or peninsula, is most visitors’ first port of call. Its dominant feature is place Bellecour, whose pink gravelly acres were first laid out in 1617, and which offer fabulous views up to the looming bulk of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. The southern portion of the peninsula starts around Perrache station, beyond which lies the Confluence district, whose regeneration continues apace.
To the north of place Bellecour at the top of quai St-Antoine is the quartier Mercière, the old commercial centre of the town, with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses lining rue Mercière, and the church of St-Nizier, whose bells used to announce the nightly closing of the city’s gates. In the silk-weavers’ uprising of 1831, workers fleeing the soldiers took refuge in the church, only to be massacred. Today, traces of this working-class life are almost gone, edged out by bars, restaurants and designer shops, the latter along rue du Président Edouard-Herriot and the long pedestrian rue de la République in particular.
Occupying the thinnest wedge of land at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers, the sparkling new Musée des Confluences is an extraordinary glass-and-steel structure that could have been plucked from the set of the newest Star Wars film. Its permanent exhibition is arranged thematically into four sections, the first of which, “Eternity”, gets to grips with life and death; the most notable, and spooky, exhibit is a Peruvian mummy, in the seated position with arms and legs clasped to its chest. In Egyptian society, animals were mummified too (being considered incarnations of gods), as evidenced by the crocodiles, rams, eagles and suchlike on display in the “Species” exhibition, which also contains a stunning collection of butterflies and bugs. “Societies”, meanwhile, ponders upon man’s ability to create – look out for the superb Berliet motor car from 1908 and Cockcroft and Walton’s particle accelerator – while, finally, “Origins” traces the various theories of evolution; the (literally) unmissable highlight here is a skeleton of the Camarasaurus, which roamed North America in the late Jurassic period.
Housed in a former Benedictine abbey on place des Terreaux, the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts are second in France only to those in the Louvre. The museum is organized roughly by genre, with nineteenth- and twentieth-century sculpture in the ex-chapel on the ground floor. The first floor houses a particularly interesting collection of Egyptian artefacts including coffins, amulets and stone tablets, in addition to a selection of medieval French, Dutch, German and Italian woodcarving and antiquities, coins and objets d’art. Upstairs, twentieth-century painting is represented by Picasso and Matisse, and there are also works by Braques, a brace of Bonnards and a gory Francis Bacon. The nineteenth century is covered by the Impressionists and their forerunners, Corot and Courbet; there are works by the Lyonnais artists Antoine Berjon and Fleury Richard, and from there you can work your way back through Rubens, Zurbarán, El Greco, Tintoretto and more. Keep an eye out for Rembrant’s earliest known work from 1625, The Stoning of St Steven.
Top traboules
All around Lyon lurk traboules, alleyways and tunnelled passages originally built to provide shelter from the weather for the silk-weavers as they moved their delicate pieces of work from one part of the manufacturing process to another. The streets running down from boulevard de la Croix-Rousse, as well as many in Vieux Lyon, are intersected by these traboules. Usually hidden by plain doors, they are impossible to distinguish from normal entryways, proving an indispensable escape network for prewar gangsters and wartime Resistance fighters. Keep a look out for subtle signs on the walls indicating the presence of a traboule.
In Vieux Lyon there's the aptly named longue traboule, a dark winding passage connecting 27 rue de Boeuf with 54 rue St-Jean. Also in Vieux Lyon, a traboule lies behind the door of 28 rue St-Jean, leading to the serene courtyard of a fifteenth-century palace. In La Croix-Rousse, go up rue Réné-Leynaud, passing St-Polycarpe on your right, then take rue Pouteau via a passage. Turn right into rue des Tables Claudiennes, and enter no. 55 emerging opposite 29 rue Imbert-Colomes. Climb the stairs into 14bis, cross three courtyards and climb the steps, where you finally arrive at place Colbert.
Vieux Lyon
Reached by one of the three passerelles (footbridges) crossing the Saône from Terreaux and the Presqu’île, Vieux Lyon is made up of the three villages of St-Jean, St-Georges and St-Paul at the base of the hill overlooking the Presqu’île. South of place St-Paul, the cobbled streets of Vieux Lyon, pressed close together beneath the hill of Fourvière, form a backdrop of Renaissance and medieval facades, bright night-time illumination and a swelling chorus of well-dressed Lyonnais in search of supper or a midday splurge.
Housed in a splendid fifteenth-century Renaissance mansion on place du Petit Collège, the Musée Gadagne comprises two very fine museums. Two floors are given over to the Musée d’Histoire de Lyon, which offers a comprehensive chronological overview of the city’s development, from antiquity to the modern day. Better still is the Musée des Marionnettes du Monde, showcasing the many different forms of puppetry from both France and around the world, including Venetian glove puppets, Javanese rod puppets, and Chinese shadow puppets.
Well worth the short trek up to Fourvière, the underground Musée Gallo-Romain showcases exhibits from prehistoric times to 7 AD, the sheer number and splendour of which serve to underline Roman Lyon’s importance. Among the many highlights is a fragment of the so-called “Claudian Table”, a fine bronze engraving of a speech by the Lyon-born Emperor Claudius, discovered in 1528 by a Lyonnais cloth-maker. Elsewhere look out for a superb Bronze Age processional chariot, and some remarkably well-preserved mosaics – “In The Circus”, for example, recalls the city’s standing as one of Roman Gaul’s most popular centres of entertainment. Alongside the museum, dug into the hillside, stand the substantial remains of two ruined theatres – the larger of which was built by Augustus in 15 BC and extended in the second century by Hadrian to seat 10,000 spectators. Nowadays, they are the focal point for the Nuits de Fourvière music and film festival each summer.
A hulking, incredibly ornate wedding cake of a church, the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière was built, like the Sacré-Coeur in Paris, in the aftermath of the 1871 Commune to emphasize the defeat of the godless socialists. And like the Sacré-Coeur, its hilltop position has become a defining element in the city’s skyline. Overblown it may be, but the interior is utterly dazzling, from the marble statues and stained glass to the gold and turquoise mosaic wall panels, depicting events such as Joan of Arc in Orleans and The Battle of Lepanto. Take a look, too, down in the crypt, where there’s some beautifully executed stonework, plus an ornate turquoise mosaic ceiling in the apse.