@titteryenot4524

5 months ago

For the traveller from Paris, and that city’s rather monochrome palette of grey to greyer (with splashes of very intermittent colour to relieve the gloom, for Paris knows that it’s a resolutely northern place, and its buildings reflect those often cloudy skies), the first thing that strikes you about Lyon, 250 miles to the south, are the warm colours. Someone described the city’s overall appearance as like a crate of peaches ripening in the sun and this captures it nicely, as the red roofs and sun-bleached, fading stone more than hint of Le Midi, a hop-skip-and-jump down the Rhone Valley (Vienne? Valence? Montelimar?) It’s no accident that Lyon is almost exactly on the same latitude as Milan and Venice, as there is more than a hint of the Italianate in the ochre walls. Lyon is a lovely open city, with significant elevation on one side - reminiscent of Grenoble - looking east over the rivers divided by Presque Ile, across the rest of town. The most charming bit is the oldest bit, as is always the case in most French (and other countries’) cities. I almost gave myself a double hernia trying to romp up Fourviere Hill, but the pain soon eased when I clocked the majestic views from atop. There are also significant Roman ruins up here that are more extensive than I’d expected; a couple of theatres and other sundry bits and bobs. Least said about the Basilica (a sort of Romanesque/Byzantine mess of a mash-up) itself, the better. The reason to be up here are the views. The best church in Lyon is the main cathedral just down the hill. The rest of the time is best spent just aimlessly wandering. The old working-class district of La Croix-Rousse, is a (slightly gentrified) throwback to Lyon’s industrial past; a kind of self-contained village within the city. Place Bellecour, the city’s main square is a big, pompous, unwieldy thing and resembles nothing so much as a military parade ground. You can imagine Napoleon rallying his troops here on his way back from exile, (even if he never did.) But minor quibbles aside, Lyon can easily cope with 3 days of your life. I still can’t quite decide if its ‘northern’ or ‘southern’, though; I have always personally marked the start of Le Midi on this side of France at Montelimar, but on a midsummer’s day in Lyon, with the cicadas’ electric buzzing filling the air: this could well be the ‘true’ south. But where oh, where, are the shutters?!

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