Metal Tower on Fourviere

Brief information

The tower on Fourvière looks like Lyon’s answer to the success of the Eiffel Tower: it was conceived for the 1894 exhibition and placed on the highest point of the city. Its designer, however, was not Gustave Eiffel, as is often thought, but the architect Collet. Its proximity to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière makes the contrast especially clear: the religious landmark of the hill and a secular metal structure from the exhibition era stand side by side.

Originally, the tower was designed for visitors: inside there was a hydraulic lift, a waiting room, a restaurant, and an observation deck. Today the deck is inaccessible, but the tower itself remains the highest point in Lyon. After its sale to French Radio and Television in 1953, the former observation tower became a relay antenna, so its silhouette is now associated not with a walk upward, but with signal transmission.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to read the tower from bottom to top, as a structure whose purpose has changed. At the bottom stand four monolithic concrete cubes with edges of 5.25 meters; they not only support the metal tower, but are also decorated with ceramic tiles, meaning the base was designed not only for strength but also for the visitor’s eye.

Between these cubes, below ground level, were the hydraulic lift and the restaurant’s cellar, while above were the waiting room and the restaurant on the second floor. These details explain why the technical tower first functioned as a leisure venue. The upper observation deck was located at a height of 357 meters from the foot of the hill; today access to it is closed, and the former viewing function has been replaced by an antenna. Thus one and the same vertical structure can be read at once as an exhibition attraction, a restaurant venue, and a radio and television tower.