Hello and salut!
It is July 2021 and I’m in Lyon,
France’s 2nd or 3rd biggest city, depending how you count these things.
And more specifically, I’m in Vieux Lyon,
the oldest inhabited part of the city
where some buildings date back to the 15th century and the Renaissance.
But more interestingly,
this neighbourhood is famous for being riddled with a labyrinth of hidden passageways.
The locals call them les traboules,
we don’t really have a word for it in English,
but a traboule is essentially a secret shortcut,
hidden behind the doors of the city.
You just have to know which doors.
So erm...
let’s walk straight through this one and see what happens.
What we’re walking into here genuinely is someone’s front door,
in fact looking at the number of letterboxes,
it’s quite a lot of people’s front door,
but this hallway is the start of a traboule:
a series of hidden passages that leads you through private buildings and courtyards
before popping out on the next street along.
It’s one of over 300 traboules in the city,
and this particular one is called La Longue Traboule,
er because it is the longest one.
It forms an east to west short cut between two north to south streets,
and this is the most common type of traboule in the old town,
but there are some that go north south,
some that go round corners,
and in other parts of town you can even find traboules with junctions
and three or four exits popping out in different places.
Now I know this is YouTube and I’m supposed to hype it up
and tell you that these are ancient secret passageways known only to locals
and used for mysterious meetings and underground activities
(and to be fair that wouldn’t be completely untrue – we’ll come to that later)
but the fact is that they’re basically just cheeky short cuts through other people’s houses.
So while we go around exploring a few more of them,
what’s the story behind the traboules?
Well it all goes back to the year 1540
and I’m sure we all remember the big news that year,
the King of France announces that he’s centralising the silk trade.
“Why is it, that it is, that we do not do all the silk trading stuff in the same place?
It will be much easier and more efficient”
And he centralises it in Lyon.
He actually passes a law saying all raw silk coming into France must be delivered here.
As a result, a lot of locals,
particularly women from lower-income backgrounds,
take up work as weavers.
And they become extremely skilled at it;
demand rises for the high-quality hand-crafted material,
and soon the streets of Lyon are swarming with people ferrying shiny silk fabric
from the workshops and studios down to the banks of the river,
where it’s loaded onto barges and transported to rich aristocrats far and wide.
And that’s where the traboules come in,
because why waste time and effort carrying a heavy load of silk
all the way round a block of buildings
when you could just take a direct route through someone’s front door,
bash through a few walls,
and come out the other side in half the time?
This is why so many of the traboules in the old town run east to west,
it was the quickest way to get your silk down to the river,
with the added benefit that you’re under cover
and your precious cargo is protected from the elements en route.
And this went on for centuries.
By the 1800s the bulk of the silk workers had moved across the river
to a district called Croix Rousse,
and sure enough if you head over there you’ll find more traboules to explore;
to be honest the ones here aren’t quite as beautiful as the ones back in the old town,
but you will still find the occasional gem
like this triple exit traboule with its spectacular staircase.
Meanwhile it wouldn’t be France without a story about industrial action
and the big traboule at Cour des Voraces has passed into local legend
as the scene of a controversial incident in the 1840s
when workers protesting about poor pay and conditions
were allegedly met by violent suppression from the army.
And of course it also wouldn’t be France without a story about la Résistance:
it turns out the traboules - and their maze of hidden passageways unknown to outsiders -
were perfect for use as escape routes and secret meeting places during the Second World War.
So Tim, this is all well and good
but aren’t you just walking through random people's front doors
and poking around their buildings?
How do you know what’s a traboule and what isn’t?
Well it’s a good question
because by nature a traboule is a public right of way
through what would normally be a private door,
and while the city is trying to protect the tradition,
only about 50 of them are still open to the public,
so it is important to know what is a publically accessible traboule
and what is trespassing on private property,
because it’s not always obvious.
In the old town, a couple of the most famous traboules are very clearly marked with historic plaques,
and I also found a couple of private doors that were very clearly marked as “not a traboule”,
but for everything else you’re best off getting a local guide to show you around,
or if you want to be independent, there are freely downloadable maps on the internet.
I’ll link the one that I used in the description.
In the Croix Rousse district there are fewer traboules
but they are more clearly signposted,
you just need to look for one of these little signs next to a door and that way
you know it’s a traboule when you walk in.
OK WHO WROTE THAT
If you’re in Lyon in the future and you’d like to explore the traboules,
the easiest way to get there is to hop on the city’s métro network
and head to Vieux Lyon station on Line D.
The passageways are open until 7pm every day and free to enter,
they just ask you to respect the residents and stay quiet while you’re passing through.
For any of you in wheelchairs, accessibility is limited
but it is possible to visit some of the traboules.
- you might need to bring someone with you to help with the very non-automatic doors in places,
but I’ll put details in the description.
As always thank you all for watching
and I will see you soon.
Oh - and if you’d like to join in with this year’s viewer challenge
you have until 14th July to do it.
Check out my previous video for more info.