Religious Art Museum of Fourvière

Founded in 1960, Lyon’s Museum of Religious Art is housed in the Maison Carré, a former Jesuit college built in 1853 on the Fourvière hill, known locally as the colline qui prie (“the hill of prayer”). The museum is home to a major collection of artworks and historical artefacts, especially liturgical textiles and objects in precious metals, and other items connected with the city’s religious life. The museum holds the treasury of the Fourvière basilica, close by, and an important archive on the latter’s construction. During recent excavations, ancient ruins were found underneath the museum building. They are from the city’s Roman period, where a Pantheon of Gods used to stand on the Fourvière hill. These ruins, buried again underneath the renovated complex, are a dormant and fragile reminder of millennia of spiritual pilgrimage to this very special site.