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The Directory › Europe › France › Lyon
Plate II · iii · c · The City

Lyon

One entry on this page, and it is the size of four. A city that has never quite forgiven Paris, and collects accordingly.

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The quays and ranked nineteenth-century facades of Lyon at dusk, the river below and the hill behind in haze
Plate II · iii · c · Between two rivers

A working city that happens to own a very great collection, and has the manners not to mention it.

A day, properly arranged
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Not a Tuesday. And do not try to add a second museum.

The entries

One entry, visited, and it takes the whole day.
An empty stone staircase and vaulted cloister inside a former abbey, dim evening light from tall windows
Interior · the old abbey stair

A convent turned museum keeps the convent's pace. You climb, you stop, you are given a window, and the next room is in no hurry for you.

VISITED · A WET AFTERNOON
Notes for the city

Two hours is the minimum and it is not enough; three if it rains, and it usually does. The building was a convent before it was a museum and the plan still behaves like one — you will lose twenty minutes to the cloister without noticing, and you should let yourself.

Go up first. The upper painting galleries are where the collection stops being provincial and starts being a rebuke, and they are the rooms most people reach when they are already tired.

One entry does not mean one afternoon. Do not stack anything else on this day; walk out along the Rhône afterwards instead and let the thing settle.

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