A Rainy Day in Lyon

We woke up to a rainy day at the InterContinental Lyon Hotel-Dieu. After getting a late start, we spent most of the afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts. We then had an early dinner at a bouchon in Old Lyon before an early end to the day.

Morning

After waking up at the InterContinental Lyon Hotel-Dieu, we headed downstairs for breakfast. We ordered an omelette this time, it was decent. The other offerings were the same as before. We keep getting the Korean chicken even though it is probably the worst thing that they serve!

It was a wet and rainy morning so we decided to rest and get a late start. Not exactly a zero day but we definitely decided to do less than usual! We headed outside a bit before noon, passing by the newly decorated Christmas tree on our way out.

We walked through the small indoor shopping area of the Hotel-Dieu for the first time since we arrived while attempting to minimize our exposure to the rain. Although we did have rain gear, we still wanted to minimize walking through the rain as much as possible!

We walked over to the Bellecour Metro station and took Line A up to Hôtel de Ville L. Pradel station. We exited the station to the north of the Opéra National de Lyon, here on the left, and City Hall, on the right.

We walked a few short blocks south to Come Buy, which markets itself as COMEBUY and COMEBUYTEA. This chain originates from Taiwan. We have visited them before on previous visits to Taipei. We ordered peach tea with regular pearls.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

We then walked a bit more than a block to the west to reach the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon).

Luckily, entry did not require online tickets or timed entry, although we don’t know if this is the case during busier times.

We picked up a pamphlet which listed some of the museum’s sculptures. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anything similar about paintings.

The museum is located around a central courtyard.

We walked through this passageway on our way to begin viewing the museum’s exhibition rooms.

The facial expression on the lion on the right is funny!

LANTERN ROOM

The masonry cylinder located in the center of the room corresponds to the lantern illuminating the dome of the grand staircase designed by Thomas Blanchet, located directly below. The stonework visible at the base of this cylinder is that of the dome's vault.

This lantern, which features a neoclassical interior decoration of stucco panels, was built at the beginning of the 19th century, probably around 1813-1814, during the work carried out by the architect Gay to install the first Museum of Fine Arts in the South wing of the Palace. At that time, it was decided to close the large side windows of the staircase to transform them into niches for statues. It was therefore necessary to provide new lighting for the staircase, hence the construction of this lantern.

During the restoration work, it was decided to reopen the staircase windows, to restore its original light while preserving the lantern.

The balustrade on which the masonry cylinder rests is older and seems to date back to the construction of the staircase, around 1680. The function of this balustrade is not clearly established: did it mark an opening made in the staircase dome?  What was the reason for this opening?

It’s always interesting to see paintings from long ago of places that we’ve been. We visited St. Mark’s back in June! This scene takes place in front of the Iconostasis, a divider between two sections of the basilica.

This seems to be one of Van Gogh‘s dark early works. We learned about this last year at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Another location that we’ve been to! The Pont de la Guillotière is the closest bridge across the Rhone to the InterContinental Hotel-Dieu where we are staying. We last walked across this bridge yesterday morning and the previous evening!

Thankfully, photography is much easier these days!

We were here in 2023! The bridge that crosses the Thames here today is actually a set of three bridges, two pedestrian and one railway. Quite different from Monet’s time!

This painting seems to depict the same three flying muses described in the previous piece.

We pretty much had this entire gallery to ourselves!

The English title of this work is “Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple”, just a little bit more detail regarding the subject compared to the title given in French on the painting’s sign!

This upper area of the museum seemed to be an activity area for children.

Again, Venice! We travelled through the Grand Canal on a vaporetto while we were here back in June.

Unexpectedly, this bust is of Jeanne d’Arc.

This painting depicts a hippodrome at Perrache. There is a modern day Perrache here in Lyon not too far away to the south on the Presqu’île. The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region’s website has a page that describes the plot of land where a racecourse was built around 1840. It seems to have been redeveloped after the Lyon-Perrache station was built in 1857.

This seems like it might possibly depict part of the interior of the Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome right next to the Piazza Barberini. The hotel we stayed at when we visited Rome, the W, was just a few hundred feet away at most from this church! And we did walk by the piazza a number of times, although we only photographed it once. Its likely we did see the front of this church as we would have walked by it at least twice during our trip.

What’s the story behind this painting? Why is it ghostly and unfinished?

This seems a bit like Medieval Times, an American chain featuring jousting tournament shows, except of course they did this kind of stuff for real in Europe!

Which is which?

This series of paintings depict “The Poem of the Soul” (Google Translated):

Louis Janmot
Lyon, 1814 - 1892

The Poem of the Soul
between 1835 and 1855

Oil on canvas
Gift of the artist's family, 1968
Inv. 1968-157 to 1968-174

This work, a kind of mystical epic, occupied Janmot for most of his life. The eighteen paintings presented here constitute the first part, complemented by a second cycle of sixteen large drawings and an extensive poetic text. The soul, having descended to earth in the form of one, then two children, a boy and a girl, journeys through the stages that lead it from childhood to adulthood, through a succession of trials and spiritual happiness.

Deeply imbued with Catholic piety, this ensemble, through its philosophical and didactic scope, is part of the religious revival movement that was particularly active in Lyon in the mid-19th century.

It would be interesting if we saw the fragments of this sculpture at the Acropolis Museum when we were there earlier this year. The Acropolis Museum website does list the Lyon Kore and includes photographs of the fragments that are there.

It turns out that we did photograph it, although from afar!

It was here in this large room! Photography was not permitted inside of this room but we were able to photograph it from above.

It is here at the center of this extreme crop! It was on display with a plaster cast of the portion that we just saw today here in Lyon! Unfortunately, we don’t know which pieces we would have looked at then. While its possible we noticed it, its just as likely we did not given how much is in that room and the museum overall.

This is a copy of the original, titled Boy with Thorn in English, made of bronze and located in the Musei Capitolini in Rome. We, of course, visited while we were in Rome earlier this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t photograph him!

We definitely saw him though as we have a photograph of the room containing the Battle of Alexander versus Darius by Pietro da Cortona. Based on other photographs available on Google, the Boy with Thorn would have been somewhere behind us when we took this photograph!

Francois Pompon apparently made a number of these Polar Bears. We saw another small one like this two days ago in Dijon. It seems he is most famous for a larger version of this sculpture which is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This is again a place we’ve visited before but unfortunately we did not photograph Pompon’s bear.

More than half of the small sculptures in this display case are by Pompon.

This is an interesting work of art unlike the others that we saw in the museum. The artist just died earlier this month.

The view to the north from the museum facing the Place des Terreaux and the Bartholdi Fountain.

Unfortunately not a great photograph of the museum’s central courtyard.

Its unfortunate we didn’t photograph any signs describing this room. However, it is the 17th century refectory, then part of the Royal Abbey, the monastery that now contains this museum.

The courtyard as seen from ground level as we concluded our visit and exited the museum.

Evening

The sky was starting to darken and there was a bit of color as we exited the museum and returned to the Place des Terreaux. We walked over to take a quick look at the Bartholdi Fountain before moving on.

The Hôtel de Ville as seen from the square.

We decided to take the Metro over to Vieux Lyon for an early dinner at one of the few bouchons that is open early. We walked to the east to enter the Hôtel de Ville L. Pradel station by the Opéra National.

After transferring at Bellecour, we arrived at Vieux Lyon – Cathédrale Saint-Jean. We walked over to the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste, which we already visited.

It was very busy in front of the cathedral. While some people were clearly tourists like us, we think most may have been attending services, or about to attend services.

Of course, we looked up at the Basilique Notre-Dame before walking over to Les Lyonnais, which was more or less a block away.

Les Lyonnais is a certified bouchon. Unfortunately, the website on their business card is no longer accurate. Their kitchen seems to open at 5pm, extremely early by Lyon standards. We visited at 5:15pm.

We started out with a red wine and a terrine appetizer. We actually wanted to try the pâté so we got the terrine as it is supposed to be similar. It was very good.

Our first main dish, a lamb shank, although the literal translation used on the menu is lamb mouse as souris is mouse. It was very good and extremely tender.

The table next to us was a Frenchman from between Paris and Versailles with his Chinese friend who he met in Shanghai. They had ordered the Filet de Bœuf Sauce Saint Marcellin, which looked amazingly good.

The other main that we ordered was a quenelle. It had a different sauce than the one we had earlier here in Lyon. It unfortunately was overall less saucy and had a bit of a different exterior texture but was similar inside.

Interestingly, this cake was basically what we’d call cornbread! It was soaked in a sugar syrup making it very moist.

We decided to walk back to the InterContinental as the weather was better now compared to during the day. We have walked back this way before so nothing was new to us. After walking around the corner, we passed by the library near the rear of the cathedral.

We continued on to cross the Saone via the Pont Bonaparte. Looking back, we had nice illuminated view of the basilica and tower above as well as the cathedral by the river.

Looking to the north, we could see the Passerelle Pierre-Truche, a pedestrian bridge across the Saone in front of the Palais de Justice.

A view to the west from the far end of the bridge.

Our last stop before returning to the InterContinental was the Coco bubble tea shop nearby. Coco is a chain from Taiwan that has over 4,000 shops globally. We ordered the strawberry black tea with brown sugar pearls. It was a very good drink.