Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Lyon's Roman founders put their forum on top of Fourvière hill, and a popular etymology says the name itself is a worn-down forum vetus, the old forum. A chapel dedicated to the Virgin eventually stood on the summit, and over the centuries it became the place where the city went to ask for things. In 1630 Anne of Austria, queen of France, climbed up to pray for an heir after years without one. Louis XIV was born eight years later. The city's most lasting promise came in 1643, with plague gripping Lyon. On 8 September the provost of the merchants and the échevins, the city magistrates, placed the population under the protection of Notre-Dame de Fourvière and vowed to climb to the chapel in procession every year. Lyon was spared, and the pilgrimage of thanks is still observed on that date. In 1852 a gilded statue of the Virgin by the sculptor Joseph-Hugues Fabisch, around five metres tall, was raised above the chapel. The unveiling was meant to be a solemn civic occasion, but a storm swept through Lyon and spoiled the celebrations. When the sky cleared, residents answered by setting small lanterns, lumignons, on their windowsills, and the city lit itself up without anyone organising it. That improvised evening of 8 December is the root of the Fête des Lumières. The next vow was made with Prussian armies advancing during the war of 1870. Anxious Lyonnais pressed Archbishop Ginoulhiac to promise Notre-Dame de Fourvière that if the city escaped occupation, a grand new sanctuary would rise on the hill. Lyon was not occupied, and the promise became a building site. Pierre Bossan, architect to the diocese since 1844, already had plans sitting in his files, and the first stone was laid on 7 December 1872, right beside the old chapel. Bossan did not see it finished. Ill and ageing, he retired to La Ciotat on the Mediterranean coast and directed the work from a distance while Louis Sainte-Marie Perrin ran the site, and from his retreat he kept drawing statues and furnishings for the church. The last stone of the structure was set in 1884, Bossan died in 1888, and the basilica was consecrated in 1896. The interior decoration carried on well beyond that, and was only completed after the Second World War, long after the men who began it were gone. Today the basilica is a working pilgrimage church and also the landmark that Lyon is measured against, visible from most of the city. The hill is part of the Historic Site of Lyon, listed by UNESCO in 1998, and a year later the city turned the spontaneous lanterns of 1852 into an official festival lasting several nights. The older custom has survived underneath it all, so every 8 December candles still flicker on windowsills across Vieux Lyon and the Presqu'île.