Metallic tower of Fourvière

This guide to the Metallic Tower of Fourvière in Lyon opens with a wartime order sitting in an occupied city's filing office: strip the tower for scrap. It backs up to 1893, when 210 tonnes of steel went up in a silhouette borrowed from the Eiffel Tower, drawing scorn from the churchmen at the neighboring basilica and a nickname honoring a Russian admiral. Look up at the lattice work overhead while you listen, the same iron that stood almost eye to eye with the basilica when it first opened in 1894.