La Croix Rousse

The Croix-Rousse is a hill in Lyon as well as the neighborhood located on the same, basically it covers a small part of the 1st arrondissement and all the 4th. We were taken by our french friends for the first time not long after our arrival and we loved the charm of this area, it is quite different from the rest of the city, its buildings and streets are quite unique and you can notice it from the moment you step out of the cog railway that takes you to the top. In fact it is nowadays the chic district of the city, but this situation is quite new as it used to be a working-class area.

 

 

Its architecture is really original, deeply determined by its past as a key place for the silk industry; the appartments have very high celings and big windows due to the enormous looms they had to accomodate when they were conceived. But this is not the only particularity, there are a lot of passageways accross the buildings, the traboules, which were created by the weavers to carry their bolts of silk down to the Presqu'íle, they had a double mission, shorten the way and protect the goods from the elements. Now they are opened to the public at least between 8h and 19h thanks to an agreement with the city, and they are a mandatory visit if you come to Lyon as it is a very rare and different concept; if you do it you may find interesting this app of augmented reality for finding the traboules, I have it and it worths the 0,79€ it costs; otherwise you can follow the signals that are all around the neighborhood and that indicate the points of interestests, traboules included.

 

The last reason why you shouldn't miss la Croix-Rousse from your visit is because of its breathtaking sights of Lyon, as it is the tallest point together with the Fourvière you can see the whole city, simply amazing.