Lyon beyond Vieux Lyon: seven addresses, from the Mur des Canuts to a pebble garden

Hidden Lyon is 7 addresses outside Vieux Lyon, and only one of them charges. Three are on the Croix-Rousse and fit into one Saturday afternoon, one is on Fourvière, one in Monplaisir and two along the rivers.

The Mur des Canuts

Boulevard des Canuts, on the corner of rue Denfert-Rochereau, five minutes from Hénon on metro line C. A false street with a staircase, shops and people at the windows, painted across 1,200 square metres of blind wall. The reason to come is not the size but that the wall changes: painted in 1987, then redone in 1997 and 2013, its figures have aged with each repaint — a boy carrying a bike in 1987 now stands as a father beside his daughter. It is in the open and free.

The Cour des Voraces

9, place Colbert, with exits at 29, rue Imbert-Colomès and 14 bis, montée Saint-Sébastien. A traboule with an outdoor staircase six storeys high, named after the silk weavers known as the Voraces, who were active revolutionaries, above all in 1848; in the Second World War members of the Resistance passed through it. People live in the building, so pass through by day and keep your voice down.

The Rosa Mir garden

87, Grande rue de la Croix-Rousse, in the courtyard. Jules Senis Mir, a mason from Spain, built it stone by stone from 1957 out of pebbles, stones picked up on building sites and shells. It opens only on Saturdays from 1 to 6 pm, last entry 5.30, from April to the end of October; in August on Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm. Free, no booking. That is why the Croix-Rousse is kept for a Saturday: the wall, the traboule and the garden are on the same hill.

2 daysThe two-day plan, hour by hour, with the Croix-Rousse on day two:Lyon in 2 days →

The Institut Lumière

25, rue du Premier-Film, metro D to Monplaisir-Lumière. The villa of 1899–1901 where the Lumière family lived; in the garden stands the Hangar du Premier-Film, the part of the factory in front of which workers were filmed leaving in 1895, and it is a cinema today rather than a museum. The museum in the villa opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6.30 pm, ticket €9.50; it is closed on Mondays. A screening in the Hangar is ticketed separately.

The Jardin des Curiosités

Place Abbé Larue, on the Fourvière hill: funicular F1 to Saint-Just or bus C20 from Bellecour to the St-Alexandre stop. A garden given to the city by Montreal in 2000, with six chairs by the Québec sculptor Michel Goulet facing different ways, and a viewpoint over the whole city. Open 8 am to 7 pm, from May to September until 10 pm; free.

Two more

• The Parc de la Tête d'Or — place du Général Leclerc. A hundred and five hectares around a sixteen-hectare lake, with a botanical garden and a zoo, all free. The park opens 6.30 am to 10.30 pm from mid-April to mid-October, and until 8.30 pm the rest of the year.
• The Fresque des Lyonnais — the corner of 49, quai Saint-Vincent and 2, rue de la Martinière. Eight hundred square metres from 1994–95, with twenty-five historical and six living Lyonnais at painted windows: the emperor Claudius, the Lumière brothers, Saint-Exupéry, Ampère, Paul Bocuse.