Basilique Saint-Martin-d’Ainay

This guide to the Basilique Saint-Martin-d'Ainay in Lyon centers on Hippolyte Flandrin, a Lyon-born painter trained under Ingres, and the golden apse fresco he painted here in 1855 after years of church-wall work had already damaged his lungs in Paris. It follows his choice of saints for the half-dome above the altar and sets his nineteenth-century brushwork against the four granite columns holding up the dome, recycled from a Roman sanctuary a thousand years older. Look for where Lucien Begule's later stained glass throws light across Flandrin's ceiling as you take in the room.