Fresque des Lyonnais

In front of you is a building that is not what it seems. The windows, balconies, ground-floor shops and the people leaning out are all painted in a trompe-l'œil covering some 800 square metres. It was created by the Lyon collective CitéCréation in 1994 and 1995, at the request of mayor Michel Noir, after the success of a similar work in Barcelona.

1Twenty-four famous names

The list was drawn up with the city's academies and historical societies. On the upper floors appear twenty-four figures from two thousand years of history: the emperor Claudius, born in Lugdunum; Blandina and Irenaeus, among the first Christians; the poet Louise Labé; the weaver Joseph Marie Jacquard, inventor of the loom that bears his name; the physicist André-Marie Ampère; Laurent Mourguet, father of Guignol; and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry with the Little Prince.

2The Lumières and the cinema

Look out for Auguste and Louis Lumière too. In 1895, at their factory in the Monplaisir district, they filmed Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, one of the first films in history, with the cinematograph they had just patented. They showed it to the public that same year.

The mural keeps changing: Abbé Pierre was painted out in 2024, and in 2025 it was announced that Laurent Gerra and Wendie Renard would be added at street level.

At ground level there were originally five contemporaries, such as Paul Bocuse, Bernard Pivot and the director Bertrand Tavernier.

3What to look for

• The fake windows: try to tell them from the real ones.
• The Lumières and Saint-Exupéry, among the famous names upstairs.
• The painted bookshop on the ground floor, with names of Lyon authors.