Colin Ross

Yesterday’s adventures in Lyon started at the site of the original Roman settlement of Lugdunum (now Fourvière). I had a look around the ruins of two theatres and some other buildings. Also in Fourvière was the site of my first of yesterday’s churches - Notre-Dame. Whilst you can walk up to Fourvière, I caught the funicular both ways.

Lyon is France’s this biggest city and I spent most of the rest of my sightseeing time in the old town and then in the newer part which is less pretty although the Opera House and Town Hall were photoworthy.

The first settlement came in 43 BC when the Roman Senate ordered the creation of a settlement for Roman refugees of war with the Allobroges. These refugees had been expelled from Vienne and were now encamped at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers. The foundation was built on Fourvière hill and officially called Colonia Copia Felix Munatia, a name invoking prosperity and the blessing of the gods. The city became increasingly referred to as Lugdunum.

In 443 the Romans established the Kingdom of the Burgundians, and Lugdunum became its capital in 461. In 843, under the Treaty of Verdun, Lyon went to the Holy Roman Emperor Lothair I. It later was made part of the Kingdom of Arles which was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire in 1033. Lyon did not come under French control until the 14th century.

In 1572, Lyon was a scene of mass violence by Catholics against Protestant Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Two centuries later, Lyon was again convulsed by violence during the French Revolution, when the citizenry rose up against the National Convention and supported the Girondins. The city was besieged by Revolutionary armies for over two months before it surrendered in October 1793.

The city became an important industrial town in the 19th century. In 1831 and 1834, the canuts (silk workers) of Lyon staged two major uprisings for better working conditions and pay. In 1862, the first of Lyon's extensive network of funicular railways began operation. During the repression of January and February 1894, the police conducted at least dozens of raids targeting the anarchists living there, without much success.

To celebrate Ash Wednesday here are photographs of the three Churches I visited today in Lyon.

If you thought Monaco was just wealth, yachts and Formula One you were pretty much correct. It has a little bit more to it, including being my 104th country.

Monaco, officially the Principality of Monaco,is a sovereign city-state and microstate (and completes my collection of European microstates). Situated on the French Riviera, it is a semi-enclave bordered by France to the north, east, and west, with the Mediterranean Sea to the south.

With a population of 38,423 living in an area of 2.08 km2 (0.80 sq mi), Monaco is the second smallest sovereign state in the world, after Vatican City, as well as the most densely populated. It also has the world's shortest national coastline of any non-landlocked nation, at 3.83 km (2.38 mi). Fewer than 10,000 of its residents are Monégasque nationals.

The House of Grimaldi has ruled Monaco, with brief interruptions, since 1297. The state's sovereignty was officially recognised by the Franco-Monégasque Treaty of 1861, with Monaco becoming a full United Nations voting member in 1993. Despite Monaco's independence and separate foreign policy, its defence is the responsibility of France, notwithstanding two small military units.

In 1191, the Holy Roman Empire granted Monaco to the Genoese in return for cracking down on pirates. By the early 1200s, the Genoese had built a castle on the rock and were utilizing the port. An ousted branch of a Genoese family, the Grimaldis, captured it in 1297 by posing as monks, but then had to contest it for a century before gaining official control. Though the Republic of Genoa would last until the 19th century, it allowed the Grimaldi family to keep Monaco. Likewise, both France and Spain left it alone for hundreds of years due to agreements with either of them, especially for defense. France annexed it in the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, but after the defeat of Napoleon it was put under the care of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

In the 19th century, when Sardinia became a part of Italy, the region came under French influence but France allowed it to remain independent and it escaped being incorporated into Italy. However, it shrank considerably when it traded two nearby towns in exchange for sovereignty from France.

Around 350 BC, the Greeks of Marseille founded a permanent settlement and called it Nikaia, after Nike, the goddess of victory.

The town has changed hands many time and is now known as Nice.

From 1388, it was a dominion of Savoy, then became part of the French First Republic between 1792 and 1815, when it was returned to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the legal predecessor of the Kingdom of Italy, until its annexation by France in 1860.

One of my first stops yesterday was to visit Castle Hill. The castle, bar a few remains is long gone and is now a leisure park. The castle overlooked the bay of Nice from the 11th century to the 18th century. It was besieged several times, especially in 1543 and in 1691, before it was taken by French troops in 1705 and finally destroyed in 1706 by command of Louis XIV.

Marseille was founded around 600 BC by Greek settlers from Phocaea, it is the oldest city in France, as well as one of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited settlements.

The city-state sided with the Roman Republic against Carthage during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), retaining its independence and commercial empire throughout the western Mediterranean even as Rome expanded its empire into Western Europe and North Africa. However, the city lost its independence following the Roman Siege of Massilia in 49 BC, during Caesar's Civil War.

The city maintained its position as a premier maritime trading hub even after its capture by the Visigoths in the fifth century AD, although the city went into decline following the sack of AD 739 by the forces of Charles Martel against the Umayyad Arabs.

It became part of the County of Provence during the tenth century, although its renewed prosperity was curtailed by the Black Death of the 14th century and a sack of the city by the Crown of Aragon in 1423.

Marseille lost a significant portion of its population during the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720, but the population had recovered by mid-century. In 1792, the city became a focal point of the French Revolution, and though France's national anthem was born in Strasbourg, it was first sung in Paris by volunteers from Marseille, hence the name the crowd gave it: La Marseillaise.

My day in Marseille began with a trip to Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica before heading across the port to Fort Saint-Jean and then onto the Cathedrale de La Major.

I also visited Mémorial des déportations that remembers the Jews who were deported during the Second World War, it also has an exhibition of the history of Marseille. I found this more interesting and informative that the actual Marseille History Museum.

Notre-Dame de la Garde Basilica was consecrated on June 5 1864, it replaced a chapel of the same name built in 1214. It is considered as a guardian of sailors and fishermen.

Sadly Fort Saint-Jean was closed today, hence the photographs are all from outside. Fort Saint-Jean sits to the north of the Old Port, remains of a Greek settlement from the 3rd century have been found at the site, but the current Fort ‘only’ dates from the late 1600s. In the middle of the fifteenth century, a square tower was built by King René to keep the port pass, a round tower was built in 1644. Much of the current fort was built between 1668 and 1671 with a flood ditch being added in 1679.

Lille is a nice town, actually with a population of 238,246 is the tenth largest city in France.

It didn’t feel that French and as I remarked to a Belgian friend I thought it was really just Greater Belgium (and I was corrected to Greater Flanders).

Wikipedia tells me “Lille belongs to a vast conurbation formed with the Belgian cities of Mouscron, Kortrijk, Tournai and Menin, which gave birth in January 2008 to the Eurometropolis Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai, the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), which has more than 2.1 million inhabitants.”

Wikipedia goes on to tell me Lille and its surroundings belong to the historical region of Romance Flanders, a former territory of the county of Flanders that is not part of the linguistic area of West Flanders. A garrison town (as evidenced by its Citadel), Lille has had an eventful history from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Very often besieged during its history, it belonged successively to the Kingdom of France, the Burgundian State, the Holy Roman Empire of Germany and the Spanish Netherlands before being definitively attached to the France of Louis XIV following the War of Spanish Succession along with the entire territory making up the historic province of French Flanders. Lille was again under siege in 1792 during the Franco-Austrian War, and in 1914 and 1940. It was severely tested by the two world wars of the 20th century during which it was occupied and suffered destruction.

Yesterday’s day trip was to Roubaix.

The main reason to visit Roubaix is to go to La Piscine, it was originally an art deco swimming pool and is now a museum and art gallery (though from the photographs it is obvious I was more interested in the statues than the pictures or fabrics).

The swimming pool was constructed between 1927 and 1932, by the Lille architect Albert Baert. It closed as a swimming pool in 1985, and was remodelled as a museum by the architect Jean-Paul Philippon, opening in 2000.

A few photographs of St. Bartholomew Cathedral and The Great Synagogue in Plzen.

St. Bartholomew was probably established together with the city around the year 1295. The church became a cathedral in 1993, when the Plzeň diocese was created. It was designated a national cultural monument of the Czech Republic in 1995.

Plzen has a network of nearly 20 km of passageways, cellars and water wells under the historic city. Yesterday I took a tour of part of the network.

This underground labyrinth ranks among the largest of its kind in the Czech Republic. Construction began at the end of the 13th century, reaching as many as three floors deep in some areas.

The Pilsen Philharmonic conductor Chuhei Iwasaki was incredibly lucky tonight to meet our Mary.

Yesterday, I met Mary in Praha. We did a bit of sightseeing, including Karla’s Head and the Astronomical Clock before having tea.

The Prague Astronomical Clock, or Prague Orloj, is a medieval astronomical clock attached to the Old Town Hall in Prague.

The oldest part of the Orloj, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, dates back to 1410, when it was created by horologist Mikuláš of Kadaň and Charles University professor of mathematics and astronomy Jan Šindel.

I visited the Holocaust Memorial to the 65,000 murdered Austrian Jews. It is also known as the Nameless Library.

The outside surfaces of the volume are cast library shelves turned inside out. The spines of the books are facing inwards and are not visible, therefore the titles of the volumes are unknown and the content of the books remains unrevealed. The shelves of the memorial appear to hold endless copies of the same edition, which stand for the vast number of the victims, as well as the concept of Jews as "People of the Book."

The Baroque Karlskirche (Charles Church) was completed in 1737, 24 years after Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI pledged to build a church dedicated to patron saint Charles Borromeo.

St. Stephen’s Catherdral in Vienna stands on the ruins of two earlier churches and was was largely initiated by Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365).

Vienna is chock-full of historic buildings, most of them are under the umbrella of the Hofburg Imperial Palace - the home of the Habsburg Royal Family in Austria.

The Palace was built in the 13th century by Ottokar II of Bohemia and expanded several times afterwards. It served as the imperial winter residence.