Mercière Street

The guide to Mercière Street reconstructs 1530s Lyon, when some sixty print shops on this narrow lane made the city a bigger book producer than Venice or Geneva. You'll hear about the Griffarins, the printing workers' secret brotherhood who shared an evening meal the master paid for, and about grand publishers like Sébastien Gryphe growing rich off their labor. Then, in the spring of 1539, the masters decided that shared meal cost too much.