Turangalila
Tinka's
New Dress
Cabaret
Great
Expectations
Inheritance
Feature Articles:
Andrew O'Hagan
Peter Temple
Adib Khan
Vikram Seth Love
in the Age of Therapy
Cyndi
O'Meara
Tango
Leona
Mitchell
Travel Stories:
Lyon
Hawaii
Grampians
Mt.
Buffalo
Speeches:
The
Power of the Sun
Life
Behind Bars
Political
Correctness
My
Boss
Book Reviews:
Ben Hills
Anne Jacobs
Elaine Lewis
|
The Heart of Lyon
(excerpt from article Renaissance Preserved, published
The Age 7 May 05)
Forget Paris. I had already been there. I had tramped through the Louvre
to the Mona Lisa, which I viewed from a distance, at the back of a throng
with massed digital cameras held aloft. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code
has turned the Mona Lisa from a popular icon into a pop idol. Paris is
full of tourists on a mission. I lacked the missionary zeal. I preferred
to pay five euros for a cup of tea, just to sit in a deserted café
in the Latin Quarter and not be on a pilgrimage.
Lyon is a different story. On a rainy day in Lyon in December, I seemed
to be the only tourist. In the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lyon I found myself
alone in front of the whimsical early Picasso, Nu aux bas rouges (Nude
with red stockings). For the entry fee of 6 euros I viewed a selection
of lesser-known Picassos and a collection of paintings by Chagall, Manet,
Monet, Degas and Renoir. Rodin donated some of his bronzes, not only Le
Baiser (The Kiss), but also the delightful Eve, sculpted in the same year
1881, and L’Age d’airain (The Bronze Age), diminutive masterpieces
that took me by surprise as I crossed the almost empty room to view yet
another Impressionist painting. And that was only a fraction of the collections
on view.
Lyon may not be one of France’s famous tourist attractions, but
it deserves to be. There is a wealth of history, art, fashion and cuisine
to explore at leisure. Twenty-four hectares of Vieux Lyon, the old city,
are now a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is the largest preserved Renaissance
area in Europe, one that has been protected and restored by the “Renaissance
of Old Lyon” scheme, introduced in 1964. Visitors, many of them
French, can discover the city without the pressure of inflated prices
or marketing hype. A waiter standing outside to smoke grinned as I raised
my camera to capture yet one more fabulous Renaissance cityscape. Tourists
are still welcome here.
The old city, le Vieux-Lyon, like the Ile de la cite in Paris, is reached
by crossing a river, the Seone, by one of several bridges. Go across by
foot and you will be drawn on by the turrets of the 19th-century basilica
Notre Dame de Fourviere, perched high above the old town that straggles
up the hillside from the water’s edge. But it took two visits to
the city before I made it up to the top. The first time, I spent a day
wandering the old streets in the pouring rain, constantly seduced by another
turn in the road, another façade, another stepped lane leading
somewhere new.
The preservation of old Lyon is not as a museum piece or tourist precinct.
People live and work here as in any modern city. Exploring the narrow
streets with their towering old buildings or climbing the stepped lanes
that lead to the basilica, I was constantly amazed at the number of people
that disappeared through fifteenth-century doors, hewn from ancient trees,
to their apartments. As I paused to gaze at an embossed grotesque on a
window at No. 2 Montee du Gourgillon a man opened the door from inside
and set off up the steep winding steps of the street, his dog bounding
ahead for its morning walk and stopping to defecate on the route that
dates back to Roman times.
Hot on the dog’s heels, a Peugeot revved its way up the street,
bouncing up the shallow steps, to park near the Impasse Turquet, a tiny
dead-end stepped laneway. I ducked down the impasse, and was confronted
by a mediaeval wooden balcony, the only original one to have survived
the frequent city fires. I reached out to touch the ancient wood as I
remounted the steps, connecting momentarily with the ghosts and plagues
of the city before sewers were invented. |