A Passage through Lyon
How much can you tell about a town through tourism?
When asked what we were going to do in Lyon, one of us replied, ‘sightseeing, eating and sleeping’. Another of us read a very out-of-date guide book before we left, but that was the sum total of our preparation.
So part of our plan for our two and two half days’ visit was made through the lens of the Tourist office, which provided us with maps, a tourist ‘access most areas’ card and a mini guide to what ‘Only Lyon’ suggested were the must-see sights. Thereafter it was all down to personal choice, based on the Tourist Office menu and our own particular interests. Did we achieve our goals and what did we learn about Lyon? As tourists we did well: ticks for enjoying ourselves, for sightseeing and for eating (as ever, sleeping was postponed). But what did we learn about Lyon?
Our first lesson is that some things in French Society haven’t changed. A lot of places were closed on Monday, and Tuesday wasn’t a great day for post pandemic museums either. So personal choice and the tourist map featured early: two wide, sinuous rivers, a lot of cityscape exploring and one enormous park.
That Lyon is central to France is pretty obvious from the map. So is the fact that it is on the confluence of two significant rivers – the Rhône, and its less well known, and harder to pronounce neighbour, the Saône. If we had gone to any of the five museums dedicated to the history of Lyon, including the specialist stuff on the Romans, the Gauls and Christianity, then one might miss the fact that around 29 BC Marcus Agrippa set up the extraordinary network of roads (the Via Agrippa) which connected Roman Lyon (known as Lugdunum) to pretty much every part of what is now France. This is ‘Asterix’ territory and one suspects that Obelix was giving Agrippa grief. We also suspect that the use of BC is no longer PC, but as Christianity was also an important part of Lyon’s history, I hope we will be forgiven. Today, Lyon is still a hugely significant administrative, economic and financial centre.
So our early walks through Lyon, dictated by the location of railway station, hotel, rivers and park introduced us to the eastern banks of the Rhone and the post medieval city. Here is grid pattern cityscape, divided into administrative arrondissements and smaller local communities with their own local characteristics. The built environment is dense and angular too, like closely spaced cardboard boxes on end, decorated in the classic style of French domestic architecture, with the occasional modern redevlopment. Small open spaces appear at fairly regular intervals but larger parks are few and far between.
Of course, the French are comfortable, and very creative, with ‘hard’ open spaces and we saw some well-used and much appreciated areas with minimal ‘soft’ landscape. We could understand why the riverside water play was closed, but its appeal to youngsters on a hot summer’s day was obvious.
The exception to the small city green space is, of course, the Parc de la Tête D’Or which sits in a curve of the Rhone to the north of the centre ville. A classic in European Park provision, this once private landscape was purchased in 1856 to create a ‘nouvel et vaste espace’ for the people of Lyon.
It took paysagiste Denis Bühler 5 years to create this ‘manifique parc à l’anglaise’. Its mix of wide grassy spaces, lake, lake side walks, woodlands, botanic gardens and small zoo provide an eclectic mélange of landscape and recreational options. Imagine our surprise when none of the cafes was open. The Swiss duo of Denis and his brother Eugène Bühler created parks throughout France in the middle and late 19th century, including Lyon’s Jardin des Chartreux on the left back of the Saône immediately to the north of Lyon’s old town.
Generations of fallow deer have grazed the Parc de la Tête D’Or and have now been joined by a small zoo including giraffes and a large number of rescue turtles (see images below). The variable beige colour of the turtles (row 2, centre image) is not natural but due to a heavy, overnight, fall of Saharan dust. Those that stayed out all night are rather obvious.
Park trees include a couple of massive Taxodium distichum (swamp cyress) with their characteristic ‘knees’ poking up along side the main trunk. Those planted so generously around the United States Embassy in London, are mere toddlers compared with these. Planes are a hall mark of the Park and one of the oldest has been retained as a natural sculpture, close to the lake. More traditional statues are also a feature, as are the splendid gates which lead out on to the Avenue de Grande Bretagne. Madame is probably just doing some stretches (bottom row, right) but we prefer to view her as a modern day ‘Asterixe’
The narrow Presqu'île between the Rhône and the Saône (below left) forms a long narrow tongue dividing the mass of modern day Lyon on the east bank of the Rhône from the older medieval town on the west bank of the Saône. It is a busy area, and hosts the extensive open space of the Place Bellecour (home to the Tourist Office and an equestrian statue of Louis XIV, below right), Lyon’s other large railway station (Gare de Perrache), and numerous churches, museums, public buildings, cafes and restaurants. According to the tourist map, pretty much the whole area is designated as a Shopping Zone. This is tourism, I suppose.
The southern tip of the Presqu'île lies at the confluence of the two rivers. It’s somewhere you feel should go, but if your tourist programme doesn’t feature the Aquarium and the two museums located in this area, we get the feeling that it’s slightly off the beaten track. Most tourists will do as we did and press on over the River Saône to enter Vieux Lyon.
We mentioned in last week’s bog that Lyon is a silk city and it all started in this medieval town, perched under the hills which pinch the Saône into a tight curving valley before it finally exits into the Rhône. Here in Vieux Lyon are all the characteristics of an old town – narrow winding streets, small squares, medieval buildings, quaint shops and a mass of cafes and restaurants full of visitors.
Here too are Lyon’s famous Traboules, covered passageways which ran through the buildings and internal courtyards to link one street with another. Thought to have been first constructed in the 4th century, they provided short cuts to the river, to collect water, and later to transport textiles from workshops to merchants and ships by or on the river. They were probably use for silk workers’ meetings and, later, by the Lyon Resistance during WWII. They are spooky, often dark, and are intimidating to people (like us) who have a deeply ingrained sense of where we can and can’t go. Despite looking so private and providing intimate access to residents’ front doors, they are freely accessible to all.
Silk became a significant part of the Lyon economy from the 15th century, but the industry waxed and waned for the next 500 years. The Silk Workers House, one museum we did manage to gain entry to, charts the history and technology of silk and has an extraordinary working display of the Jacquard loom which Wikipedia describes as ‘a mechanical loom that rapidly industrialized the process of producing silk’. Although the brocades and damasks produced by this method are stunning and the technology feels way ahead of its time – a punch card system installed on the top of a wooden loom, dictating the pattern to the weaver – the rate of production was around a third of a metre a day, and the financial risk lay entirely with the weaver.
We also went to the Lumière Cinema Museum, the Resistance and Deportation History Centre and the the Fine Arts Museum.
But there are huge holes in our knowledge of, and appreciation of, the city. Just a peek at the silk industry, no knowledge of Lyon’s printing heritage and, more to the point, a complete blank on modern architecture, the docks, the modern industrial areas and the banlieue.
Can you get under the skin of a city as a tourist? Of course not. Can you have a good time? You certainly can. Are we better informed about France’s third city? Well, just a bit. Will we need to go back? I hope so.
Oh yes – and the food. I don’t believe that French cuisine has declined. But I do now believe that British cooking has got a whole lot better.