Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/127

Rh LYONS 111 The Rhone, less confined than the Sa6ne, flows swiftly in a wide channel, broken when the water is low in spring by pebbly islets. On the right hand it skirts first St Clair, sloping upwards to Croix-Rousse, and then the districts of Terreaux, Bellecour, and Perrache ; on the left it has a low-lying plain, subject to disastrous inundations, occupied by the Pare de la Tete d Or and the quarters of Brotteaux and Guillotiere. The park, defended by the Grand Camp embankment, comprises 282 acres, and con tains a zoological collection, botanical and pharmaceutical gardens, and the finest greenhouses in France, with unique collections of orchids, palm-trees, and Cycadacex. Brot teaux is a modern town with boulevards and regular streets, and in this direction Lyons is extending every year. In the old districts there is no room for growth ; they are crowded with old buildings of eight or ten stories, or even more, and it has been the task of the last thirty years to open them up by means of thoroughfares. Guillotiere, to the south, is a workmen s quarter of wretched houses. The Rhone is lined with broad quays, and crossed by ten fine bridges, two of them for railway traffic. On the right bank stand the lyce&quot;e and the public library, the Hotel Dieu, the military hospital, and the Hospice de la Charite ; on the left bank is the long range occupied by the medical faculty. In the east of Guillotiere the Geneva railway skirts the artillery barracks. Northward from Fourvieres appear the green slopes of Mont d Or, descending towards the Saone by pleasant glades sprinkled with villas ; to the east, beyond the some what monotonous plain, stretch the mountains of Savoy and Dauphine ; to the south, below the confluence of the Rhone and the Saone, the river traverses a rich landscape to pass out of sight at the foot of Mont Pilat ; and to the west the horizon is bounded by the Forez hills. Since 1852 the communes of Croix-Rousse and Guillotiere have been united with Lyons. The Rhone and the old fortifications, which, on the right bank of the Saone, stretched in an unbroken line from the rock of Pierre Seize below Vaise to the bridge of Ainay, continued by those now replaced by the Croix-Rousse boulevard, marked the boundaries of the ancient city. The line of Croix-Rousse has now been thrown forward to the north, and further strengthened by Forts Caluire and Montessuy. On the left bank of the Rhone stand Forts Tete d Or, Charpennes, Brotteaux and Part-Dieu, Villeurbanne, Lamotte, Colombier, and Vitriolerie. On the right bank of the Saone Forts Ste Foy, St Ire&quot;nde, Loyasse, Vaise, and Duchere completed the defensive system of Lyons previous to 1870; but since that date the dominant points of the neighbourhood have begun to be crowned with batteries and redoubts ; but only Forts Brou and Feyzin on the left bank of the Rhone, St Genis on the right bank, Mont Verdun on Mont d Or, and Vencia are finished. Of the ancient buildings in Lyons, Fourvieres is the one which attracts most visitors. It derives its name from the ancient forum (Forum vetus), whose site it occupies. The first chapel, dedicated to the Virgin, was erected in the end of the 9th century. Consecrated afterwards to St Thomas of Canterbury, and then made a collegiate church, Notre Dame de Fourvieres was created superior of twenty-five villages by Louis XL, on occasion of his visit in 1476. Laid waste by the Protestants, plundered at the Revolution, it began to be visited again in 1804, and in 1805 Pope Pius VII., returning from the coronation of Napoleon, ascended thither to give his benediction to the city a ceremony renewed from year to year with great pomp. The church tower, 172 feet high, is surmounted by a statue of the Virgin in gilded bronze, 18 feet high, turned towards the town ; on the pedestal are bronze plates with inscriptions assigning to the Virgin the credit of ending the plague of 1643, and of preserving the town during the cholera epidemics of 1832, 1835, and 1850. The first stone of a magnificent new church was laid in 1872. The crypt, 219 feet by 62, is as yet the only portion finished. At the foot of Fourvieres, on the right bank of the Saone, lies the metropolitan church of St John (the archbishop of Lyons is primate of all Gaul). The choir belongs to the early years, the transept to the close of the 12th century; the building of the nave, carried on during the next three hundred years, was completed only in 1480. In one of the two towers there is a bell weighing nearly 10 tons. 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. St Martin d Ainay, in the Perrache quarter, is the oldest church in Lyons, dating from the beginning of the 6th century ; the chapels of the apse are adorned by paint ings by Flandrin. 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. In the crypt of the church of St Irenseus are the tomb of that saint and a vast quantity of bones, alleged to be those of 19,000 martyrs put to death in the persecution of Severus. The Place Bellecour is adorned west and east by two monumental facades Originally erected after plans by Mansard, but destroyed in 1793, and rebuilt under the consulate in a somewhat modified style. In the middle stands an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. by Lemot. The Rue de 1 Hotel de Ville, connecting the Place Bellecour and the Place des Terreaux, and the Rue de la Republique running parallel with it are among the finest streets of the modern city. The east side of the Place des Terreaux (so called from the &quot;terreaux&quot; now occupying the place of the canal which formerly connected the Rhone and the Saone) is formed by the hotel de ville, which, however, turns a better front in the opposite direction towards the theatre; the south is occupied by the Palais St Pierre (formerly a convent), which gives accommodation to the faculties of science and literature, and to the school of fine arts, the picture gallery, the museums of sculpture, archaeology and natural history, and the art library. In the Rue de la Republique, between Place de la Bourse and Place des Cordeliers, each of which contains one of its highly ornamented fronts, stands the building occupied by the exchange and the commercial court. The former has its offices on the ground floor round the central glass-roofed hall ; besides the court, the upper stories accommodate the council of prud hommes, the chamber of commerce, and the industrial museum. The palais de justice, a fine building with a Corinthian colon nade, on the right bank of the Saone, occupies the site of the palace of the counts of Forez. A statue of Jacquart the inventor stands in Place Sathonay, and one of Marshal Suchet in Place Tholozan. The Academy of Lyons has the five faculties of Catholic theology, science, literature, medicine and pharmacy, and law, with two lyceums, and a number of schools ; and the Catholic institute has three faculties law, science, and theology. The school of fine arts was founded in the 18th century to train competent designers for the textile manu factures, but has also done much for painting and sculpture. The veterinary school of Lyons, instituted in 1761, was the first of its kind in Europe ; its laboratory for the study of comparative physiology is admirably equipped. L Ecole la Martiniere (founded by the legacy of Claude Martin) furnishes gratuitous teaching of the sciences and industrial arts. The school of commerce and the Lyons central school complete the list of institutions for industrial education.