Every design for Lyon

Lyon grew up where two rivers meet: the Rhône, fast and wide, and the slower Saône, joining at the tip of the Presqu'île with the French Alps rising somewhere off to the south-east. Between them and the hills of Fourvière and the Croix-Rousse, the city has a shape you never forget once you have learned it.

That shape carries a feeling. It is the steep climb up the Croix-Rousse slopes, through hidden passages like the Cour des Voraces, in the city that grew rich on silk. It is the old stones of Vieux Lyon around the Cathédrale Saint-Jean, the Renaissance façades and La Tour Rose. It is the evening light on the quays, and the smell of a Lyonnais kitchen on a cold night. Lyon is famous for its cuisine, and the people who live there take that seriously, but what they miss when they leave is something quieter: knowing which way the river flows.

On Fourvière hill the Théâtre Gallo-Romain de Fourvière still looks down over the rooftops, as it did when Lyon was capital of the Gauls. Wherever you go afterwards, the confluence pulls you back.