A little history of Place Bellecour
And also
The tops
Bellecour is third biggest square in France, after place des Quinconces (Bordeaux) and place de la Concorde (Paris)!
Originally, we have here swamps and few houses which belonged to the abbey Saint-Martin d’Ainay. Since a long time, the place was called Belle Cour, Belle curia: "nice Court".
In 1562, during wars of Religion, baron des Adrets transformed the place into a public square: they described it as a "vast and big place, a nice one like the huge champ de Mars in Rome". Is that all?
In 1658, Lyon city owned the land in order to raise a square, a real one. Based on plans by Robert de Cotte, they built two Classical buildings on each side of the square.
They called it place Louis-le-Grand, dedicated to king Louis XIV. Of course, we had in the middle an equestrian statue of the king, made in 1701 by Keller brothers. In 1714, brothers Coustou added rivers Rhône and Saône’s allegories. Just before the Revolution, we could see two big fountains, destroyed in 1792.
Oh, other things were destroyed too... The façades of the two buildings were damaged, so Napoleon re-raised them in 1800. Because king Louis statue was melted in 1799, they raised a new one in 1825, made by Frédéric Lemot, from Lyon...