Esplanade de la Grande-Côte

This guide to Esplanade de la Grande-Cote in Lyon opens on a foggy January morning in 2022, when a former justice minister climbed onto this bare terrace with no podium to announce a run for the presidency of France. It traces how this flat platform came to exist at all: a swath of houses torn down against residents' protests in the early 1970s, then smoothed into an esplanade decades later. In summer the forecourt still turns into an open-air venue for concerts, dances and film screenings projected against the night.