Vieux Lyon

Vieux Lyon is one of the largest Renaissance quarters in Europe, built when the city's fairs and silk trade drew Italian bankers, and it was among the first areas in France protected by the 1962 conservation law. Its particularity is the traboule: a passage running through the ground floor and courtyard of a building to emerge on the parallel street, developed because the blocks are long and narrow between the Saone and the hill. Silk workers used them to move woven cloth under cover. Around forty are open to the public, marked with plaques, and the Cour des Voraces on the Croix-Rousse has a dramatic open staircase.

What you actually see

• The traboules - covered passages cutting between parallel streets.
• The Renaissance courtyards - galleried yards behind plain street doors.
• The Cour des Voraces - a tall open stairway on the silk workers' hill.
• The Saint-Jean cathedral - a Gothic church with a fourteenth-century astronomical clock.

When to go

April to October; the Fete des Lumieres in early December fills the city for four nights. Traboules open on set hours, generally daytime, and residents ask for quiet.

Honest expectations

Traboules are private buildings opened by agreement: many are locked outside set hours and noise draws complaints. The quarter is crowded and touristy along the main streets, with quieter lanes a block away.

Nearby

Fourviere basilica is on the hill above; the Presqu'ile is across the Saone.