Place Bellecour

In front of you stretches Place Bellecour, more than 62,000 square metres: one of the largest squares in France and Lyon's kilometre zero, from which distances are measured. Its name comes from 'bella curtis', the fine garden the archbishop owned here in the Middle Ages. The reddish ground is gravel brought from the Beaujolais.

1A king who arrived twice

The first statue of Louis XIV, by Martin Desjardins, was installed in 1713. In 1793, at the height of the Revolution, it was melted down to make cannon. The present one, by François-Frédéric Lemot, was unveiled on 6 November 1825; it was cast in Paris and hauled to Lyon by twenty-four horses. The two great bronze statues of the Rhône and the Saône by the Coustou brothers, which went with the first statue, are now in the City Hall.

2The Little Prince and the stone sentinel

In the south-west corner, a column carries Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his Little Prince: the writer and aviator was born in 1900 in a nearby street. The statue was unveiled in 2000, for the centenary of his birth.

On the corner of Rue Gasparin, the 'Veilleur de pierre' commemorates five Resistance fighters shot here by the Germans at the end of July 1944, in reprisal for a bomb at the Moulin à Vent café that had caused no casualties.

Every December, during the Fête des Lumières, the square hosts some of the major light installations.

3What to look for

• Louis XIV, dressed as a Roman and riding without stirrups.
• Saint-Exupéry and the Little Prince, in the west corner.
• Fourvière, overlooking the square from its hill.