The Bartholdi fountain
The Garonne's four horses by Liberty's sculptor — bought by Lyon, rebaptised Rhône.
Corentin Eustacchi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · FOTO:Fortepan — ID 100684: Adományozó/Donor: Dobóczi Zsolt. — CC BY-SA 3.0 · FOTO:Fortepan — ID 100685: Adományozó/Donor: Dobóczi Zsolt. — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France — CC BY 2.0
For art lovers plainly: a collection from Egypt to the Impressionists called France's third, in a calm Paris never offers. Two focused hours — or just the free cloister garden with its statues for a poetic mid-walk rest.
The Terreaux hinges three worlds: south, the commercial Presqu'île and its great streets; east, the glass-domed opera; north, the Croix-Rousse slopes with their stairs and bohemian-artistic traboules. Choose your direction over a coffee on the square.
Twice if you can: by day for museum and motion, by night when fountain and façades light and buskers play — the square after dark is among Lyon's finest free scenes.
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The Terreaux is Lyon's formal salon: the city hall's grand seventeenth-century façade to the east, the Palais Saint-Pierre — an old abbey holding the Fine Arts museum, 'Lyon's little Louvre' — to the south, and Bartholdi's roaring fountain as its star. The fountain's story amuses: Bartholdi — of Statue of Liberty fame — carved it for Bordeaux as the river Garonne with four charging horses; Bordeaux found it expensive, Lyon bought it in 1890, and the Garonne became Rhône-and-Saône by Lyonnais interpretation. Freshly restored, it wears its original bronze-red again. The square anchors the UNESCO quarter between the rivers below Croix-Rousse — the silk hill's climbing lanes start here, the Saône bank and the Fresque des Lyonnais are minutes off, and metro line A runs beneath.
The Garonne's four horses by Liberty's sculptor — bought by Lyon, rebaptised Rhône.
A seventeenth-century façade grand enough for France's second city.
An abbey turned art museum ranking just behind the Louvre and Orsay.
Place des Terreaux, 69001 Lyon