La Guillotière

This guide to La Guillotière traces a river crossing named not for a blade but for a long-forgotten innkeeper called Guillot, and the string of bridges Lyon kept losing here, including a wooden span that buckled under the crusading armies of Richard the Lionheart in 1190. It follows the stone rebuilds that dragged on for over a century after 1558, and how every version of that crossing funneled pilgrims and travelers into a neighborhood that grew up rough, cheap and industrial around glassworks and candle factories. Listen for how little of that history survives beneath the concrete span you'd cross today.