Montée du Gourguillon
Encyclopedia
The Montée du Gourguillon is a very old street
Street
A street is a paved public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable...

 of the hill of Fourvière in the 5th arrondissement of Lyon
5th arrondissement of Lyon
The 5th arrondissement of Lyon is one of the nine arrondissements of the City of Lyon.- History :The 5th arrondissement was created on 24 March 1852 . It is the historic center of Lyon. It is at Fourvière that Munatius Plancus founded the Roman colony of Lugdunum in 43 BC...

, between the Saint-Jean and Saint-Just quarters. It begins from the Place de la Trinité
Place de la Trinité
The Place de la Trinité is a square located in the 5th arrondissement of Lyon. The square, fully paved and surrounded by old buildings like the sun house , is more a crossing of small streets than a real square. It is on the hillside of Fourvière and is the low extremity of the hill of Gourguillon...

 and ends with the rue des Farges. The street belongs to the zone classified as World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

 by UNESCO.

Origin of the name

There are various explanations for justify the name "gourguillon". The name would come from the Latin words gurgulio which means "throat" or "to gurgle", which is an onomatopoeia to express the sound of bubbling water down when it dropped on the slope. According to other sources, the name may also come from gurges sanguinis as reference to the blood of the martyrs of 177 that would flow from the top of the hill, although this explanation is much less credible than the first one. Indeed, according to a fable, in 1790, the fourth battalion
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...

 of the National Guard
National Guard (France)
The National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...

, which was recruited in this neighborhood, has a flag with the Latin motto Dat sanguine palmas.

Description

The montée du Gourguillon has a length of 400 meters with a climb of 53 meters, which represents a slope of just over 7.5° on average. The street is wholly paved and has no sidewalk from its bottom to its intersection with the montée des Épies and has at regular intervals (every 10 meters) small steps over its entire length. The street is pedestrian
Pedestrian
A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In some communities, those traveling using roller skates or skateboards are also considered to be pedestrians. In modern times, the term mostly refers to someone walking on a road or footpath, but this was not the case...

 but the residents can move and many cars are parked. Houses of the 15th century with decorated mullioned windows with fantastic animals and grotesques are still visible.

At number two, a private traboule with symmetrical galleries to a staircase is opened and overlooks to the montée du Chemin-Neuf. Between Nos. 5 and 7, there is the Impasse Turquet which shows the latest (14th century) wooden galleries of Lyon. On the western side, there are ruins untils number 12 and, on the other side, high houses, then a large white stone portal with a garden. From number 14, buildings consist of houses and large garden walls alternatively. In the middle of the rise, there is the Place Beauregard at the location of a slight widening of the square at the junction of stairs of the montée des Épies. This square was created after 1540, as it was not indicated on the plan of that year, and was built after the step backwards of a few houses that were rebuilt. In addition to this montée des Épies that opens on the left by climbing long stairs on the hillside down to Saint-Georges quarter, there is the rue Armand-Caillat which joins the montée des Épies.
At its end, the montée du Gourguillon is divided into two almost diametrically opposite ways: a staircase that leads into the rue des Farges, before the school of Saint-Just in the continuity of street axis, and the other one is the continuation of the top of the paved hill, lined with sidewalk
Sidewalk
A sidewalk, or pavement, footpath, footway, and sometimes platform, is a path along the side of a road. A sidewalk may accommodate moderate changes in grade and is normally separated from the vehicular section by a curb...

s which joins the montée du Chemin-Neuf.

History

From the Roman times to the late 16th century, the street was the sole road to provide an access to Saint-Just quarter and it was often frequented by processions of the most powerful men (e.g., in 1245, Innocent IV, the emperor of Constantinople and the Count of Toulouse passed by the montée du Gourguillon when they went to the Cathedral of St. John to open the thirteenth ecumenical council). Originally, it was a natural road to climb on the hill of Fourvière on the side of Saint-Just from the Vieux Lyon
Vieux Lyon
The Vieux Lyon is the largest Renaissance district of Lyon in the 5th arrondissement.This zone is served by the metro line In 1954, Vieux-Lyon, the city's oldest district, became the first site in France to be protected under the Malraux law to protect France's cultural sites...

, which are the two ancient centers of the city, Fourvière, the high center of the ancient city of Lugdunum which ailed in the late Ancient history
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...

 to the benefit of Vieux Lyon, on the Saône banks. In the Middle Ages, the street was called Beauregard, was not lined with houses except in its lower end, and there was on its top the door of the city wall which opened into the Saint-Just quarter, which was an independent village then.
According to a legend, after the 177 persecution, the blood so flowed through the Gourguillon that it flushed the Arar and thus observers called it "Sagona", from Latin sanguinis, which then became "Saône". In 1218, the Dominicans moved to the home of Madeleine, which was fortified in 1271. On 14 November 1305, a wall of the street on which some people were sat collapsed on the motorcade of Pope Clement V
Pope Clement V
Pope Clement V, born Raymond Bertrand de Got was Pope from 1305 to his death...

, who had just been crowned Pope in the basilica of Saint-Just by the King of France Philippe le Bel. Twelve people died in this accident, including the brother of Pope John II, and the Duke of Brittany
Duke of Brittany
The Duchy of Brittany was a medieval tribal and feudal state covering the northwestern peninsula of Europe,bordered by the Alantic Ocean on the west and the English Channel to the north with less definitive borders of the Loire River to the south and Normandy to the east...

 who died three days after. The legend says that in his fall, the pope lost his turban and a 6,000-florin precious stone was loosened and eventually buried under the rubble; however, according to an account by Ptolemy of Lucca, it was found later.

Between 1525 and 1555, doctor of laws, humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

 and archaeologist Guillaume De Choul received many scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

s and scholars in his house located in the street. At the top, a convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...

 was progressively built between 1577 and 1647 and was "one of the most significant of France". In the 16th century, the Trinitarian Sisters settled at number two, and they were allowed on 16 and 23 July 1658, respectively by Camille de Neuville and the consulate, to build a hospital to be used as hospitality for their religious order. The Monastery of the Incarnate Word, composed of the 27-meter facade house of the Madeleine and the Florentine Orlandini home, was installed in 1655. The monastery was replaced by the Institute of the Incarnate Word, led by Mr. Guillard. It had a dining room with walls covered with cards painted by students, and a covered gym
Gym
The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, that mean a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men...

, built under the direction of Colonel Amoros.
In the 16th century, Laurencin had a famous inn
INN
InterNetNews is a Usenet news server package, originally released by Rich Salz in 1991, and presented at the Summer 1992 USENIX conference in San Antonio, Texas...

 called Trois Fontaines. In 1670 or 1676, a compartmented mosaic (20 feet long and 10 feet wide) showing a battle between Love and the Pan god was found in a vineyard owned by the surgeon Cassaire and which was part of the garden of the Vendôme house in the 19th century, and was placed in a museum in 1822. A Roman cippus with a 15-line epitaph
Epitaph
An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial...

 in honor of a nine-year old boy was found in the house of Mr. Raymond who donated it to the Museum of Lyon in 1843. On 31 July 1847, another mosaic was unearthed in front of the Bouvier ladies boarding. Another inscription found was transported to the Île Barbe
Île Barbe
The Île Barbe is an island in the middle of the Saône, in the 9th arrondissement of Lyon, France....

 and was used as slab of an altar in the chapel of St. Martin. In 1849, four Masonic lodge
Masonic Lodge
This article is about the Masonic term for a membership group. For buildings named Masonic Lodge, see Masonic Lodge A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisation of Freemasonry...

s held meetings at No. 22. In 1873, a newspaper named La Gazette du Gourguillon was published and disappeared quickly.

In 1827, this street was described as "disgusting and dirty" due to "the black color of [its] dirty and badly built houses. Shortly after the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the remains of a woman, dismembered and packaged in a newspaper, were found in the trash, while the scavengers were on strike, after being ritually killed by her husband, a member of the Inghilis sect.

See also

  • 5th arrondissement of Lyon
    5th arrondissement of Lyon
    The 5th arrondissement of Lyon is one of the nine arrondissements of the City of Lyon.- History :The 5th arrondissement was created on 24 March 1852 . It is the historic center of Lyon. It is at Fourvière that Munatius Plancus founded the Roman colony of Lugdunum in 43 BC...

  • Vieux Lyon
    Vieux Lyon
    The Vieux Lyon is the largest Renaissance district of Lyon in the 5th arrondissement.This zone is served by the metro line In 1954, Vieux-Lyon, the city's oldest district, became the first site in France to be protected under the Malraux law to protect France's cultural sites...

  • World Heritage Site
    World Heritage Site
    A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK