Lyon
— — the city that lights itself on the eighth of December.
Not only on a wall.
“Two rivers meet here, and the older city sits between them on a long thin peninsula. Above it all, the basilica on Fourvière keeps watch. The traboules cut through Vieux Lyon like seams in a coat. Passageways the silk workers used to carry bolts dry through the rain. Down at street level, the bouchons keep their windows fogged through winter.
Lyon, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lyon sits at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône in east-central France, about 470 kilometres south of Paris and roughly 150 kilometres west of the Alps. With around 520,000 in the city proper and over two million in the metropolitan area, it is France's third-largest urban region. The Presqu'île, the long peninsula between the two rivers, holds the civic centre. To the west, the Fourvière hill rises sharply, crowned by the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, completed in 1884. Vieux Lyon, on its slopes, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
On the eighth of December every year, residents place small candles, called lumignons, in their windows, and the city becomes a four-night light festival. The Fête des Lumières began in 1852, when Lyonnais lit candles in thanks to the Virgin Mary after a cholera epidemic spared the city. The modern version draws around two million visitors and pulls in light artists from across Europe. Projections wash across the façade of the Cathédrale Saint-Jean, the Place des Terreaux, and the Fourvière basilica above the old town.
The bouchons of Lyon are small, family-run restaurants serving the city's traditional Lyonnais cuisine: quenelles, andouillette, salade lyonnaise, pike dumplings in Nantua sauce. About twenty hold the official 'Authentique Bouchon Lyonnais' certification, awarded by a local commission since 1997. Visitors mostly find them clustered in Vieux Lyon and on the Presqu'île. The traboules, covered passageways that thread between buildings, were built from the fourth century onward and used by Renaissance silk weavers to move bolts of fabric protected from the weather. About forty are open to the public.