The stone lacework in the Bourbon chapel of Saint-Jean cathedral © Antoine Merlet
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The beautiful houses of rich merchants and bankers of Vieux-Lyon bear witness to the effervescence of the city from the second half of the 15th century, but treasures of the religious heritage, sometimes tenuous vestiges of disappeared buildings, also attest to the economic and political development of the city.
Delicate ribs of the Bourbons chapel, the former portal of the Gadagne chapel which has become the entrance to a wealthy 19th century building, musician angels of the Saint-Paul church … sometimes you have to rediscover well-known buildings or move away from the beaten track to appreciate architectural gems of the Renaissance.
The Renaissance was truly a re-birth for Lyon. Weakened by epidemics, against the backdrop of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), the city emerges from several centuries of economic torpor. It became a European financial center, at the heart of market relations, with the advent of fairs and, thanks to the wars in Italy, the place of regular stays of monarchs.
Until the beginning of the Wars of Religion in the following century, Lyon experienced a period of peace and prosperity, nevertheless punctuated by hunger revolts such as the Great Rebeyne of 1529.
If the Church retains a strong influence, its economic and then political power has eroded in previous centuries, to the benefit of an urban patriciat which made Saint-Nizier its center of activity. At the end of the 14th-beginning of the 15th century, new conventual churches, larger and richer, were rebuilt, for example with the participation of the brotherhoods of trades in the church of Saint-Bonaventure, in the Cordeliers, or that of the “Florentine nation” for Notre-Dame-de-Confort, the church of the Jacobins.
Built between 1480 and 1508 by Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, Archbishop of Lyon, and completed by his brother Pierre, Duke of Bourbon and Count of Forez, the Bourbon Chapel is a wonder of flamboyant Gothic delicacy. Famous for its sculpted decoration, genuine openwork stone lace, its ribs (liernes and tiercerons), adorning the ribbed vaults and hanging keys, are also typical of this period. However, the chapel reveals fine details, often overlooked, such as the name
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