transept and choir belong, it was not finished till the 15th
century, the gable and flanking towers of the west front being
completed in 1480. A triple portal surmounted by a line of
arcades and a rose window gives entrance to the church. Two
additional towers, that to the north containing one of the largest
bells in France, rise at the extremities of the transept. The
nave and choir contain fine stained glass of the 13th and 14th
centuries as well as good modern glass. The chapel of St Louis
or of Bourbon, to the right of the nave, is a masterpiece of
Flamboyant Gothic. To the right and left of the altar stand
two crosses preserved since the council of 1274 as a symbol of the
union then agreed upon between the Greek and Latin churches.
Adjoining St Jean is the ancient Manécanterie or singers’ house,
much mutilated and frequently restored, but still preserving
graceful Romanesque arcades along its front. St Martin d’Ainay,
on the peninsula, is the oldest church in Lyons, dating from the
beginning of the 6th century and subsequently attached to a
Benedictine abbey. It was rebuilt in the 10th and 11th centuries
and restored in modern times, and is composed of a nave with four
aisles, a transept and choir terminating in three semicircular
apses ornamented with paintings by Hippolyte Flandrin, a
native of Lyons. The church is surmounted by two towers, one
in the middle of the west front, the other at the crossing; the
four columns supporting the latter are said to have come from
an altar to Augustus. A mosaic of the 12th century, a high altar
decorated with mosaic work and a beautifully carved confessional
are among the works of art in the interior. St Nizier, in
the heart of the city, was the first cathedral of Lyons; and the
crypt in which St Pothinus officiated still exists. The present
church is a Gothic edifice of the 15th century, with the exception
of the porch, constructed by Philibert Delorme, a native of
Lyons, in the 16th century. The Church of St Paul (12th and
15th centuries), situated on the right bank of the Saône, preserves
an octagonal central tower and other portions of Romanesque
architecture; that of St Bonaventure, originally a chapel
of the Cordeliers, was rebuilt in the 15th and 19th centuries.
With the exception of the imposing prefecture, the vast buildings
of the faculties, which are in the Guillotière quarter, and the law
court, the colonnade of which overlooks the Saône from its right
bank, the chief civil buildings are in the vicinity of the Place des
Terreaux. The east side of this square (so called from the
terreaux or earth with which the canal formerly connecting the
Rhone and the Saône hereabouts was filled) is formed by the
hôtel de ville (17th century), the east façade of which, towards
the Grand Theatre, is the more pleasing. The south side of the
square is occupied by the Palais des Arts, built in the 17th century
as a Benedictine convent and now accommodating the school of
fine arts, the museums of painting and sculpture, archaeology
and natural history, and the library of science, arts and industry.
The museums are second in importance only to those of Paris.
The collection of antiquities, rich in Gallo-Roman inscriptions,
contains the bronze tablets discovered in 1528, on which is
engraved a portion of a speech delivered in A.D. 48, by the
emperor Claudius, advocating the admission of citizens of
Gallia Comata to the Roman senate. The “Ascension,” a
masterpiece of Perugino, is the chief treasure of the art collection,
in which are works by nearly all the great masters. A special
gallery contains the works of artists of Lyons, among whom are
numbered Antoine Berjon, Meissonier, Paul Chenavard, Puvis de
Chavannes. In the Rue de la République, between the Place de
la Bourse and the Place des Cordeliers, each of which contains
one of its highly ornamented fronts, stands the Palais du
Commerce et de la Bourse, the finest of the modern buildings of
Lyons. The Bourse (exchange) has its offices on the ground
floor round the central glass-roofed hall; the upper storeys
accommodate the commercial tribunal, the council of trade
arbitration, the chamber of commerce and the Musée historique
des Tissus, in which the history of the weaving industry is
illustrated by nearly 400,000 examples. In the buildings of the
lycée on the right bank of the Rhone are the municipal library
and a collection of globes, among them the great terrestrial
globe made at Lyons in 1701, indicating the great African lakes.
The Hôtel Dieu, instituted according to tradition in the beginning of the 6th century by King Childebert, is still one of the chief charitable establishments in the city. The present building dates from the 18th century; its façade, fronting the west quay of the Rhone for over 1000 ft., was begun according to the designs of Soufflot, architect of the Pantheon at Paris. The Hospice de la Charité and the military hospital are on the same bank slightly farther down stream. The Hospice de l’Antiquaille, at Fourvière, occupies the site of the palace of the praetorian prefects, in which Germanicus, Claudius and Caracalla were born. Each of these hospitals contains more than 1000 beds. Lyons has many other benevolent institutions, and is also the centre of the operations of the Société de la Propagation de la Foi. The chief monuments are the equestrian statue of Louis XIV. in the Place Bellecour, the monuments of President Carnot, Marshal Suchet, the physicist André-Marie Ampère, and those in honour of the Republic and in memory of the citizens of the department who fell in the war of 1870–71. The most noteworthy fountain is that in the Place des Terreaux with the leaden group by Bartholdi representing the rivers on their way to the ocean.
There are Roman remains—baths, tombs and the relics of a theatre—in the St Just quarter on the right bank of the Saône. Three ancient aqueducts on the Fourvière level, from Montromant, Mont d’Or and Mont Pilat, can still be traced. Magnificent remains of the latter work may be seen at St Irénée and Chaponost. Traces also exist along the Rhone of a subterranean canal conveying the water of the river to a naumachia (lake for mimic sea-fights). Agrippa made Lyons the starting-point of the principal Roman roads throughout Gaul; and it remains an important centre in the general system of communication owing to its position on the natural highway from north to south-eastern France. The Saône above the town and the Rhone below have large barge and steamboat traffic. The main line of the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway runs first through the station at Vaise, on the right bank of the Saône, and thence to that of Perrache, the chief station in the city. The line next in importance, that to Geneva, has its station in the Brotteaux quarter, and the line of the eastern Lyonnais to St Genix d’Aoste has a terminus at Guillotière; both these lines link up with the Paris-Lyon main line. The railway to Montbrison starts from the terminus of St Paul in Fourvière and that to Bourg, Trévoux and the Dombes region from the station of Croix-Rousse. A less important line to Vaugneray and Mornant has a terminus at St Just. Besides the extensive system of street tramways, cable tramways (ficelles) run to the summits of the eminences cf Croix-Rousse, Fourvière and St Just.
Lyons is, next to Paris, the principal fortress of the interior of France, and, like the capital, possesses a military governor. The immediate protection of the city is provided for on the east side by a modern enceinte, of simple trace, in the plain (subsidiary to this is a group of fairly modern detached forts forming an advanced position at the village of Bron), and on the west by a line of detached forts, not of recent design, along the high ground on the right bank of the Saône. Some older forts and a portion of the old enceinte are still kept up in the city itself, and two of these forts, Montessuy and Caluire, situated on the peninsula, serve with their annexes to connect the northern extremities of the two lines above mentioned. The main line of defence is as usual the outer fort-ring, the perimeter of which is more Defence. than 40 m., and the mean distance from the centre of the city 612 m. This naturally divides into four sections. In the eastern plain, well in advance of the enceinte, eight principal sites have been fortified, Feyzin, Corbas, St Priest, Genas, Azieu, Meyzieux, Décines and Chaurant. These form a semicircle from the lower to the upper reaches of the Rhone. The northern (or north eastern) section, between the Rhone and the Saône, has forts Neyron and Vancia as its principal defences; these and their subsidiary batteries derive some additional support from the forts Montessuy and Caluire mentioned above. On the north-west side there is a strong group of works disposed like a redan, of which the salient, fort Verdun and annexes, is on the high plateau of Mont d’Or pointing northward, and the faces, represented by forts Frêta and Paillet, are lower down on the spurs of the ridge, facing north-east and north-west respectively. The south-western section comprises three principal groups, Bruisson, Côte-Lorette and Montcorin-Champvillard, the last-named crossing its fire over the Lower Rhone with Fort Feyzin. Lastly a connecting battery was built near Chapoly in 1895 to close the gap between the north-western and south-western
