Place des Terreaux

In 1206, a group of Lyon merchants went to Archbishop Renaud II de Forez with a complaint. The Archbishop had violated a charter that he signed in 1195 by not following the agreements made regarding taxes on goods. To protect the village of Saint-Nizier from the Archbishop's power, the Lyon bourgeois decided to build a wall and tower to control the bridge of the Exchange. However, the Archbishop intervened with force in 1208, and peace was only restored with the help of Pope Innocent III.

Despite this conflict, Renaud de Forez and his successors continued to build walls to protect the city from a potential attack by the Dombes. They constructed a new two-meter-thick and ten-meter-high wall between the Saône and Rhône, which was approximately 500 meters long. The wall had two gates defended by drawbridges, ten towers, a crenelated walk, and five stone booths for soldiers to watch from. A 22-meter ditch separated the main wall from another two-meter wall to the north. In the fourteenth century, a third structure was added into the slope, and in the fifteenth century, a new structure was built on the Saint Sébastien hilltop consisting of a mound of earth protected by wood towers. The ditch, called Terralia nova or Fossés de la Lanterne, could be filled with water in case of a siege. The Neyron channel, a succession of basins dug laterally to the Rhone, allowed water to enter the ditch when needed.

Under normal circumstances, crossbowmen and culverin men used the ditches as a training location, first on the Saône side, then from 1533 on the Rhône side.

The walls surrounding the city of Lyon in the 16th century began to crumble, and in 1538, the enclosure was demolished. Later, the ditch on the Saône side was filled to build the Boucherie de la Lanterne, and in 1555, the stones from the wall were used by the nuns of the convent Saint-Pierre to repair their monastery. By 1617, the former ditch disappeared with the development of the gardens of city hall, which now house the Opera.

In the 17th century, the Hôtel de ville de Lyon was built on the eastern side of the square by Simon Maupin, and later rebuilt by Jules Hardouin-Mansart after a fire in 1674. The convent of Saint-Pierre was also rebuilt and became the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 1803.

The square has a dark history as it was the site of numerous executions, including that of Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq-Mars, who was beheaded for conspiring against Richelieu. During the French Revolution, the guillotine was set up and claimed many lives. In the second half of the 19th century, the site was expanded to accommodate the restructuring plan of the peninsula led by Claude-Marius Vaïsse.

The central feature of the square is an allegorical fountain of the Saône, created by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and inaugurated in 1891. The fountain was originally located in Bordeaux but was purchased by the Mayor of Lyon, Antoine Gailleton. In 1994, the square was redeveloped by Christian Drevet and Daniel Buren, including the addition of a rotating fountain with 69 jets of water and 14 pillars. The square was classified as a monument historique in 1995.

In 2012, the fountain froze during a cold winter.