The Silver Arcade of Lyon
Glass-roofed arcade where a beloved marionette hero once performed amid goldsmith boutiques.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Silver Arcade in Lyon follows a glass-roofed passage built for goldsmiths and jewelers that took on an unexpected second life as a stage for the beloved rogue puppet Guignol, created decades earlier by a silk worker to mock doctors, lawyers, and landlords. It also traces the arcade's role in the canut weavers' uprising, when soldiers blew open its iron gate with cannon fire. Look up at the roughly eighty meters of glass roof overhead, largely unchanged since the eighteen twenties.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Le Petit Musée de Guignol
Puppet museum tracing a satirical folk character born from a street dentist's crowd-pulling act.
Musée d'histoire de Lyon - Gadagne
Renaissance banking mansion turned history museum, home to the original Guignol puppets.
Traboule et Cour des Voraces
Six-story stone stairwell inside a hidden covered passage, once a silk-workers' stronghold and Resistance escape route.
Maison des Avocats
Renaissance courtyard of Tuscan arcades that once hosted a lawyers' guild and satirical trial farces.
Passage Thiaffait
Curved nineteenth-century traboule of stone stairs, now workshops for fashion and textile makers.
Pentes de la Croix Rousse
Steep silk-weavers' district of hidden passageways once used to smuggle fabric, revolutionaries and resistance fighters alike.