City Hall courtyard

City Hall, built between 1646 and 1652 by Simon Maupin and Girard Desargues is one of Lyon’s grandest historic buildings. The interiors were completed in 1672 but destroyed in a fire two years later. Painstakingly restored by two Royal architects, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Robert de Cotte between 1701 and 1703, the building has been listed as a historic monument since 1886.

Its inner courtyard, decorated with arches, opens onto a fountain providing a magical setting for the Festival of Lights.

Source: Lyon History Museum - Musées Gadagne

Previous years

Théâtr’Eaux

When you enter the courtyard of City Hall, you are immediately plunged into a mysterious aquatic world. CozTen has taken inspiration from a Breton legend in which the city of Ys, like the lost isla

2019 Festival

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Tricolore

Visitors passing through the gates of City Hall are guided to the main courtyard by dancing beams of light. For the duration of the festival, the building is converted into a giant traboule, the se

2018 Festival

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Éphémères

Whatever happened? The inner courtyard of City Hall has been overrun by vegetation, like the sacred Inca sites or the temple of Angkor Wat. Nature has reclaimed the spot with wickerwork creepe

2017 Festival

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Platonium

From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, from material to immaterial, from research to pure sensitivity, the artist and the scientist take us across space-time, the better to understand e

2016 Festival

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Njörd, Spirit of the Wind

Discover the spirits of the wind in the City Hall courtyards, which have been transformed into an ephemeral sanctuary. Materialized by a multitude of feathers carried on a light breeze, they dance

2014 Festival

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Lost Paradise

Welcome to unreality: the upper courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville has been invaded by luxuriant vegetation, haloed with a cold light. Guided by a shining path and a sound composition realised by the DJ

2013 Program

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Silk Kokeshi

Seven Kokeshi’s dolls have invaded the courtyard of the City Hall. Each of these seven illuminated dolls is carrying a luminous cocoon nestling in the centre of their stomachs. They all seem to be int

2012 Program

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Gust

Like an escapee from the Town Hall archives, a ream of paper is dispersed into the night. Each of the 200 sheets rises delicately towards the sky, light and glittering, magnifying the ambient architec

2011 Program

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