Pentes de la Croix Rousse
Steep silk-weavers' district of hidden passageways once used to smuggle fabric, revolutionaries and resistance fighters alike.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon follows the silk weavers, or canuts, who worked tall-windowed looms on this hill and struck in November 1831 when merchants kept cutting their pay. It traces the traboules, the hidden passages threading through the buildings around you, from the barricaded streets of the 1830s and 1840s uprisings to the Cour des Voraces stronghold, and on to a very different use by resistance fighters during the Nazi occupation. Climb the courtyard's six-story staircase and you're tracing the same escape route two generations used a century apart.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
La Croix-Rousse
Silk-weavers' hillside laced with hidden passages once used to dodge soldiers and Nazi patrols.
Traboule et Cour des Voraces
Six-story stone stairwell inside a hidden covered passage, once a silk-workers' stronghold and Resistance escape route.
Passage Thiaffait
Curved nineteenth-century traboule of stone stairs, now workshops for fashion and textile makers.
La Longue Traboule
Renaissance passage of five linked courtyards threading through four old buildings between two historic streets.
La Maison des Canuts
Working silk museum with live Jacquard loom demonstrations and the story of the weavers' nineteenth-century revolts.
Association Soierie Vivante
Working silk-trim workshop with carved walnut Jacquard looms, preserved exactly as weavers left it.