Place Colbert

The Place Colbert features a jagged, triangular footprint tucked against the steep incline of the Croix-Rousse hill. This quiet patch of cobbles sits where the dense weaving workshops of the nineteenth century once crowded the slope. Silk workers dragged their heavy looms through these narrow gaps, their livelihoods dictated by the demands of luxury merchants below. In eighteen thirty-four, soldiers barricaded this exact space during the Canut revolt, turning the square into a flashpoint for the city’s uprising against low wages.