Traboule et Cour des Voraces

This guide to the Traboule et Cour des Voraces on Lyon's Croix-Rousse hill traces the six-story spiral staircase back to 1849, when Lyon's silk-weaving canuts barricaded themselves inside it against government troops. It follows the courtyard's name to a band called the Voraces, the ravenous ones, and jumps forward a century to the German occupation, when Resistance fighters used the same blind turns and hidden doors. Look up from the base of the stairwell: six floors of landings spiral above, lit only by daylight filtering down the shaft.