La Longue Traboule

The traboule is one of the defining features of Lyon. These were built because of Lyon’s long streets and long city blocks. This made crossing the city blocks not that convenient. I can understand the difficulty when sometimes you just want to go through a store just to get to the other side. The city of Lyon has a solution for this. Instead of creating more streets. Passageways through the city block were built. These are called traboules. One can think of a traboule as shortcut just to get to the other side of the block. Add a network of these traboules and you have a very convenient way of crossing the city.

I happen to chance upon one of these traboules – La Longue Traboule. I don’t know much about this particular traboule nor do I know if any traboule would have a different story compared to the others. This one is open to the public and there tourists going in the traboule. The entrance is much like an apartment entrance. This one shares the entrance with the actual apartment upstairs. Naturally, if you want to go to the apartment, you have to take a different path inside. As for the tourists, there is a straightforward path to follow. It is actually well lit since many people would still be using it. There would be parts where one can have a look at the apartments above. While I thought it was weird to see this, since this is practically private property, it was not possible to see in the apartments in the first place. If they residents wanted to, they can probably look over but tourists won’t be able to see anything. I ended up in the opposite side of the block. Fortunately, the layout of Vieux Lyon is easy to figure out.

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