Emerging from the Parisian shadow, Renaissance Lyons comes into its own

All French provincial cities have had to learn to live in the shadow of Paris. Some, like Marseilles, prefer to look away—to the sea; others choose to celebrate a new intimacy won by improbably fast TGVs. The city of Lyons, as Stendhal mused, seemed to lack many “great men” and, what is more, to rejoice in their rarity. And such unambitious joie de vivre marked a contrast not only with Paris, but with that city just up the Rhone, Geneva, where the likes of Rousseau and Calvin