Lyons. Did you know ? Before, the Peninsula was an island: we tell you its story
By Theo Zuili
Published on
The city of Lyon was founded in 43 BC under the name of Colonia Copia Felix Munatia. Already stood under the hill of the Croix-Rousse the Gallic city of Condate.
While the Roman colony and the Gallic village were to merge and take the name of Lugdunum, then one day Lyon, the peninsula we know today was not one.
The ancient peninsula: an unrecognizable landscape
An arm of the Saône separate the Fourvière hill and the Vieux-Lyon district. The Rhône meanwhile flowed directly under the hill of Croix-Rousse and the village of Condate. The Peninsula did not exist.
Instead a few islands emerged which, very numerous in the Iron Age, gradually became larger and fewer in number when the Roman colony was founded.
One of these islands, the largest, is today the well-known Presqu’Île. The Romans call it Canabae. Wine merchants settled there in the 3rd century.
To the east, where the 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 8th arrondissements are today, is a floodplain.
Birth of a peninsula
In the 3rd century, the hill of Fourvière was so inhabited that more space had to be made to accommodate the growing population. The arm of the Saône which forms the Île de Saint-Jean was cleaned up during major works which made it possible to invest in this district which was to be called “Vieux Lyon”.
Remediation then takes place to create a continuous space on the slopes of the Croix-Rousse in the Ainay district, where the confluence is pushed back. In Terreaux, a canal linked the Rhône and the Saône.
This is the face of Lyon at its foundation, therefore: two hills on the surface of the water, an island of Saint-Jean, an island of Canabae and other islets with changing contours according to the flow of the Rhône. It flowed where the Terreaux is, Perrache was under water, rue du Boeuf too.
The medieval peninsula: a new city center
The fall of the Roman Empire is painful for the Peninsula, ravaged by floods and looting.
In the 9th century, the bishop of Lyon decided to establish the abbey of Ainay at the southern end of the peninsula. During the Middle Ages, it was one of the most important in the region. The Presqu’île will impose itself as the new center of the city. The channels that connect the two rivers are backfilled.
The modern peninsula: pushing back the Confluence
To obtain the peninsula that we know today, we had to wait until 1841. It took on its current appearance and surface thanks to the work of the engineer Michel-Antoine Perrache, which began in 1771.
Then, the water of the Rhone bathed the ramparts of Ainay. Once Place Bellecour was fitted out and endowed with a beautiful statue of the king, the Consulate of Lyon acquired an island south of Ainay.
The engineer Perrache proposes extending the borders of Lyon to the south by pushing back the confluence as far as La Mulatière, a project judged to be “a businessdrying up of the Mediterranean by an apprentice mason by popular opinion.
If the engineer’s vision did not entirely succeed, the project was nonetheless a success: the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône was pushed back south for the second time in Lyon’s history. An entire neighborhood comes out of the water.
The architect François-Alexis Cendrier had a station built which, when it opened in 1857, was named “Perrache”, in homage to the engineer who gave his name to the neighborhood he imagined.
Was this article helpful to you? Note that you can follow Actu Lyon in the My Actu space. In one click, after registration, you will find all the news of your favorite cities and brands.