Rue Saint-Jean
Renaissance commercial artery of tall merchant houses, threaded with covered passages once used by traders and porters.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Rue Saint-Jean in Lyon centers on a Florentine banking family, the Gadagne, exiled from Florence and rebuilding their fortune a few steps from here in the fifteen hundreds. You'll hear how their bank grew large enough to draw clerks from across Italy and porters hauling strongboxes between counting houses, and why a phrase about extravagant wealth still traces back to a loan made to the King of France. Look up at the narrow merchant houses along the street and note the traboules threaded behind their doors, built so goods could cross the quarter without following the river-parallel streets.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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