Lyon

The passages cut straight through buildings, so a door gives no sign of the street behind it. They were cut to carry silk out of the rain. The ones opened by agreement with residents carry a plaque beside the door. Most are unlocked 7am to 7pm.

White stone on top of the hill, its four bell towers set like the corners of a fort. The city vowed to build it if the war of 1870 spared them, so it stands as thanks. From the rail beside it the centre lies below, with the Alps east on clear days.

The theatre was cut into the Fourviere slope two thousand years ago and still takes concerts every summer. The stone rows turn slippery, so after rain only the lower tiers stay open.

The houses on this hill were built with high ceilings to take the silk looms. Those same ceilings now pull in studios and workshops. Several stair routes link the hill with the centre, and none of them is a gentle climb.

A large park against the centre with no fence around it, and going in costs nothing. A lake, plant houses and a small zoo sit inside, which stretches the circuit. The glasshouses open in winter as well, though they shut earlier than in summer.

A covered market, so rain makes no difference, and each stall keeps a counter for eating on the spot. The oyster and fish end draws the crowd, and many stand there with a glass of white. It takes its name from a cook born just outside Lyon.

A whole gable painted with steps and people, convincing enough from a distance to read as a real lane. It was first painted in 1987. Every decade or so it is redone, which lets the figures age.

Glass and steel at the point where the two rivers join, twisted so that the floors do not align. Natural history and anthropology share one building, so a dinosaur skeleton stands next to burial customs.

An astronomical clock of the 14th century stands inside the cathedral in Vieux Lyon. Figures move at set hours, and those hours are few, so the timetable decides when to be there. The carvings on the west front were beheaded in the Revolution and left so.

It served as a hospital for some eight hundred years and reopened in 2018 as courtyards and shops. The river front runs so long that walking it end to end covers more than three hundred metres.

A square of red gravel mid-peninsula, among the largest car-free squares in Europe. Louis XIV rides a bronze horse at its centre, and one corner holds a statue of Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince. Two metro lines cross underneath.

The town hall square, home to a fountain by Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty. Four snorting horses pull its chariot, and the piece was first made for Bordeaux. Cafe terrace chairs around it face the town hall front.

Housed in a former Benedictine convent along the southern edge of Place des Terreaux, its range runs from Egyptian relics to Picasso. The cloister garden needs no ticket, and benches sit among the statues. It shuts on Tuesdays.

Four nights around 8 December, light shows on churches and squares. It began in 1852, when people set candles in their windows as the Virgin statue on Fourviere was blessed, and many sills still carry small glass candles. Evenings jam the peninsula.

The Monplaisir villa of the Lumiere brothers' father, displaying the cinematograph they invented and their early reels. Part of the factory where they shot their first film in 1895 survives as a cinema, mostly screening old films.

A museum in a 16th century building in Vieux Lyon, mixing props and special effects make-up used on real film shoots with miniature rooms built to scale. Some models are fine enough to need a magnifying glass. A rainy day with children suits it.

A concrete building dug into the slope next to the Roman theatre, where a ramp leads down past mosaics and gravestones of Roman Lyon. The bronze tablet carrying Emperor Claudius's speech is the star piece. Windows look over the theatre's stone tiers outside.

A medieval walled village about 35 kilometres north-east of Lyon, its rounded cobbles and timber houses intact enough that period films come here to shoot. An old lime tree stands in the main square. An hour covers it.

On the hills of southern Beaujolais, villages built of iron-rich yellow stone give the area its name, the land of golden stones. As the sun lowers, the walls turn the colour of honey. From the hilltop church in Oingt, the view runs over vines toward Lyon.