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It makes no difference how many times you visit Lyon, or -as is the case for The Grandma -whether you have had the chance to live there because your job took you there, no matter how often you visit the city, a trip to Fourvière is a must, for that is where it all began.
The Grandma has wondered what the life of a woman like her would have been like in the Fourvière of Lugdunum, and how many things have remained completely unchanged over the two thousand years of history of this beautiful city -now one of the most important in Europe. In fact, she has wanted to think about Lugdunum through the eyes of two women separated by almost two thousand years.
More information: Fourvière
From Fourvière, she has closed her eyes and has begun to imagine...
She stands on the hill and looks down at the city. Her name is Julia. It is the second century AD, and nobody calls this place Lyon. The city beneath her is Lugdunum, one of the great cities of Roman Gaul.
Julia does not know that she is living in what future historians will call Antiquity. She does not know that archaeologists will one day uncover the stones beneath her feet, carefully catalogue fragments of pottery, reconstruct buildings and try to imagine people like her.
For Julia, this is simply home. And from the heights of Fourvière, her world seems enormous.
The first thing she notices is probably movement. Lugdunum is not silent. People walk along its streets. Carts carry goods. Merchants negotiate. Artisans work in their workshops. Officials discuss matters of administration. Travellers arrive from distant parts of the Empire. Down below flow the Saône and the Rhône.
Julia has seen boats carrying wine, oil, pottery and countless other goods. She has heard accents that do not sound like hers. Lugdunum lies at an extraordinary crossroads between the Mediterranean world and the northern territories of Gaul.
Rome may be far away, but Rome is everywhere. Its laws, its gods, its administration, its coins and its architecture have shaped the city. And yet Lugdunum is not simply Rome transplanted to Gaul. It has its own rhythm. Its own landscape. Its own people.
What might Julia's day be like? That would depend enormously on who Julia was. A wealthy Roman matron and an enslaved woman could inhabit the same city while experiencing two radically different worlds. Roman society was profoundly unequal, and women's lives were shaped by wealth, family status and legal position.
Let us imagine that Julia belongs to a reasonably prosperous household. She knows the shops and markets of the city. She buys food and household goods. She visits relatives and neighbours. She knows which streets become crowded at particular times of day. Perhaps she visits the baths. Roman baths are not merely places for washing. They are places where the city meets itself: people talk, exchange news and maintain social relationships. Water itself is one of Lugdunum's great achievements. Bringing sufficient water to a city built high above the rivers requires extraordinary engineering.
Julia does not need to understand the calculations behind an aqueduct. She only needs to turn towards a fountain and watch the water flow. Sometimes the most sophisticated technology becomes invisible precisely because it works.
And then there is entertainment. Not far from Julia stands the great theatre. Thousands of people can gather there to watch performances, particularly comedies and dances. Nearby, the smaller odeon welcomes music and public recitations. Imagine Julia among the audience. Imagine the conversations before the performance begins, the clothes, the laughter, the impatience of the spectators.
For a few hours, thousands of inhabitants of Lugdunum look towards the same stage.
Almost two thousand years later, people will gather on this very hill once again to watch performances. The actors will change. The language will change. The music will change. But people will still sit together beneath the Lyon sky waiting for a story to begin. Perhaps Julia would understand that perfectly.
Lugdunum is powerful. It is an administrative centre and an important mint produces coins here. Roads connect the city with the rest of Gaul and the Roman world. Materials and objects arrive from astonishing distances. Marble comes from different parts of the Mediterranean. Wine and food travel along commercial routes. Merchants follow the rivers. Julia may never travel to Egypt, Greece or Asia Minor. Yet pieces of those worlds can reach her city.
Lugdunum teaches her something every great city eventually learns: you do not need to travel everywhere for the world to arrive at your door.
Now another woman stands on Fourvière. Nearly two thousand years have passed. She does not call the city Lugdunum. She calls it Lyon.
The landscape before her would be almost incomprehensible to Julia. Bridges cross the rivers. Cars move through the streets. Trains arrive and depart. Electric lights illuminate the city at night. Buildings cover areas that Julia would have known as countryside. The modern woman can communicate instantly with someone thousands of kilometres away. She can travel in a few hours distances that would have required Julia days or weeks. She knows what lies beyond the horizon.
Julia could only imagine it. And yet...
The modern woman looks down from Fourvière and sees movement. People are going to work. Others are meeting friends. Someone is buying food. Someone is complaining about politics. Someone is falling in love. Someone is late. Someone is worried about money. Someone is watching a performance. Someone has just arrived in Lyon and hears a language they do not understand. Someone else has lived here all their life and cannot imagine calling anywhere else home.
Suddenly, Julia's world does not seem quite so distant.
If Julia could stand beside that modern woman, they would probably understand very little about each other's lives. Their ideas about religion, family, citizenship, freedom, medicine and the position of women would reveal an enormous distance between their societies.
Julia might consider some aspects of our world miraculous. We would consider others in hers profoundly unjust. But perhaps they would eventually stop looking at each other and turn towards the city. That might be the moment when they finally understood one another.
Because cities are not only buildings. They are habits. They are noises. They are journeys repeated every morning. They are markets and conversations, celebrations and arguments. They are strangers arriving and inhabitants staying. They are memories accumulated in the same streets.
Julia looks at Lugdunum. The modern woman looks at Lyon. Both see home.
Fourvière has watched the city change for more than two thousand years. Empires disappeared. Religions changed. Languages evolved. Buildings rose, vanished and rose again.
Lugdunum became Lyon.
But down below, between the Rhône and the Saône, human beings continued doing what human beings have always done. Living. Working. Meeting. Loving. Remembering. Perhaps that is what Fourvière really teaches us. Cities change enormously. Life changes with them.
And yet the essential reasons why we need cities -to meet, exchange, create, belong and remember- may have changed much less than we think.
More information: The Collector
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