Place des Terreaux

The Place des Terreaux is a square located in the center of Lyon, France on the Presqu'île between the Rhône and the Saône, at the foot of the hill of La Croix-Rousse in the 1st arrondissement of Lyon. The square belongs to the zone classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The square is bordered :

In 1206, associations of merchants of Lyon ran to Archbishop Renaud II de Forez, who failed to comply with the charter signed in 1195 by violating the agreements made in respect of taxes on goods. To protect the village of Saint-Nizier from ecclesiastical power, the bourgeois of Lyon then decided to raise a wall at the foot of the hill of Saint-Sébastien (slope of the Croix-Rousse) and a tower on the Saône to control the bridge of the Exchange, which was the sole passage between Saint-Nizier and Saint-Jean (a parish on the west side of the Saône, in Vieux Lyon); de Forez intervened by force of arms in 1208, and peace returned through the intervention of Pope Innocent III.

However, Renaud de Forez and his successors continued the works undertaken by the bourgeois of Lyon, in order to protect the city from a potential attack by the Dombes. A two-metre-thick and ten-metre-high new wall was built between the Saône and Rhône. Approximately 500 metres long, this enclosure was pierced by two gates defended by drawbridges (la Porte de la Pêcherie o the Saône et la porte de la Lanterne) and protected by ten towers. A crenelated walk and five stone booths allowed soldiers to watch at the top. The main wall was separated by a 22-metre ditch from another two-metre wall located to the north. In the fourteenth century, a third structure built into the slope was added, then, at the beginning of the 15th century, a new structure was built on the Saint Sébastien hilltop, consisting of a mound of earth protected by wood towers. In case of siege, the ditch, which was called Terralia nova (Fossés of Terreaux) or Fossés de la Lanterne, could be filled with water. This one entered when needed in a succession of basins, called the Neyron channel, dug laterally to the Rhone.

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