Theree Temples In Lyon (continued)

Museum, Travel

Temple to Reason: Musée des Confluences

Who are we and what is our place in the world? The definition of human identity and the link between what we term ‘humanity’ and ‘animality is a topic of universal debate. We question the way human beings see the world, form part of it and contribute to its transformation. Our world is one in which the living, human and non-human, interconnect with each other in a variety of ways and form a web of life. The Musée des Confluences

Michele and I are home, safe and sound in our little beddy-byes, but my blog is still in France, and I want to keep it that way for a while.

I want to start this post by saying – confessing, really – that when Michele first mentioned she wanted to see the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, I thought it was an art museum, much like the art museums we have been visiting in every city we have been to. It isn’t. As Michele was researching hours and location, she discovered that the museum is billed as a science center and anthropology museum.

When we walked in later than we had planned because of a very nice, late morning breakfasst of oysters – that I augmented with the largest, tastiest, prawn I have eaten since Hong Kong in 2009 – I thought the musée would be a natural history museum similar to my favorite, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, or a science museum like the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It was like neither, and yet it was kind of both.

But the Musée des Confluences is a museum unlike any I’ve seen before. Every science and natural history museum I’ve visited, and every National Park I’ve been to, presents their information as immutable certainties. This museum doesn’t. This museum presents its information as what we currently think. In my mind, that is a significant difference.

Too many of us think our opinion is the Truth, and we hold these collected Truths as dogma. That attitude makes much of the country distrustful of us coastal elites and our allied experts. The Musée des Confluences presents a more nuanced and softer picture. An information card, for example, states: Human beings use observations and the laws of physics in an attempt to understand the origin and evolution of the universe. The prevailing cosmological model, called the Big Bang, portrays the Universe as a system in expansion that might have begun around 13.8 billion years ago.

The Musée des Confluences is not an art museum, but, starting with the building – in which the actual museum, the display rooms, are on the second floor giving the building a feeling of standing on its tippy toes like an oil derrick, or, as we learned at the museum, a mammoth – the displays are often as much art as information.

The museum building was designed by an Austrian firm, Coop Himmelb(l), an out-of-town architectural firm that I had never heard of (I’ve ranted about out-of-town architects enough, so I’ll just let it go). BTW, the fact that I’ve never heard of Coop Himmelb or their founders should not be taken as a judgment on the firm, just a judgment of my ignorance of current, important, architects and buildings. BTW, the name of the firm, Coop Himmelb, is a pun on blue sky, and the company’s tagline is Himmelblau is not a color but an idea of creating architecture with fantasy, as buoyant and variable as clouds. So they do sound sort of with-it.

The Musée des Confluences is named for the confluence of the Saône and Rhône Rivers. This area has a long and rich human history, and the accumulated detritus from that long history comprises much of the museum’s collection. Confluences also represents the coming together of three major local archaeological collections: the Natural History Museum of Lyon, the Guimet Museum in Lyon, and the Colonial Museum of Lyon, which, in turn, were the result of the confluence of previous collectors, going all the way back to the brothers Gaspard and Balthasar de Monconys who started collecting in the 17th Century.

The combination of these three disparate collections could have easily resulted in a chaotic and disorganized mess, but it didn’t; it resulted in a wonderful and fascinating museum that combined the best of both old-timey museums, as a collection of whatever the original collectors were collecting, and less stuff but more teaching about the stuff. Michele and I stayed, fascinated, until they kicked us out. I wholeheartedly recommend the Musée des Confluences to anyone visiting Lyon.

Before I conclude this post, I would like to make a final, probably unnecessary, comment. The museum has a display of three females, from left to right, Homo floresiensis, Homo sapiens – that’s us – and Homo neanderthalensis that were all inhabitating different parts of our planet at the same time. We are the only ones left and, by most accounts we wiped out the other Hominins (maybe because the Homo floresiensis and Homo neanderthalensis women didn’t modestly cover their breasts, but probably not).

Three Temples In Lyon

Travel

After our drive through the French Alps – I think that’s what the general area is called – our entry into Lyon was through Lyon’s industrial underbelly. It is not the entry I would suggest to an otherwise beautiful city. Lyon is a city Michele and I both wanted to revisit after first seeing it in July of 2018. It is France’s third-largest city, after Paris – which is Europe’s largest city, unless, of course, one wants to count Moscow as European, which I don’t – and Marseille. We arrived late on Sunday, and the two main places we wanted to see – or re-see, in one case – were closed on Monday.

A Temple to Faith

We defaulted to a unique cathedral on a hill overlooking Lyon, the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière, designed by Marie-Louis Jean Sainte-Marie Perrin. Marie-Louis Jean Sainte-Marie Perrin is a local guy, which is pretty unusual, but very welcome. The Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière is, to my eye, a strange building – its website says that it is a combination of “Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque styles – it shouldn’t, but it does seem to work. As an aside, I couldn’t find the Romanesque parts, and I would add Baroque to the list, especially in the interior.End aside.

Under the main cathedral, is a smaller church which I thought was more intimate and appealing.

Near the Basilique Notre-Dame, there is a Roman theater, probably built about 15 BC when Lyon was Lugdunum and Augustus was visiting (or in charge). At that time, Lyon was the capital of Roman Gaul, and the theater held, presumably, about 10,000 screaming fans.

A Temple To Food

We went to Lyon primarily to see the Musée des Confluences, but first we revisited Lyon’s Temple to food, Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse. Lyon self-identifies as “the world capital of gastronomy,” and they are probably right. I liked the food here better than anywhere we have traveled (except, maybe, Tokyo). The city’s history has promoted and continues to promote the exchange of culinary products and cultural influences.. Lyon’s culinary history dates back to when it was a major Roman trading center 25 centuries ago, which has led to its distinctive and influential cuisine. That cuisine was also heavily formed by the influence of the “Mères Lyonnaises” -“female cooks” to us less fluent in Lyonese cooking history – who had their own restaurants especially during the 19th through the early 20th centuries. While it’s hard to believe that women were ever influential in anything, if you read most history books, you can look it up.  

We had planned to arrive early, spend a couple of hours at the Food Temple, and then go to the main event, the Musée des Confluences. That, it turns out, is impossible. Here are a couple of, almost random, photos from inside the Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse.

To be continued…

(The déjà vu of) Driving To Lyon Through A Stunning Landscape

Cousins' Trip, Travel

But first, an aside, France is modern. Even the electric outlets look modern, and the cars even more so. End aside.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. Mark Twain

Almost a week ago, we drove from Die to Lyon. We drove the long way, up a valley into the mountains, over a pass – well, through a tunnel about 500 feet below the actual pass – down the valley to the north, and across some rolling foothills, and then across the mostly flatlands into the industrial part of Lyon.

As we headed up, the road was steep with lots of switchbacks, but after the tunnel, the descent was more gradual, somewhat like going over the Sierras from east to west, but not as extreme. We passed through several small, picturesque villages, and I started thinking about a conversation I had at our re-u with one of the hosts.

I had said that the village we had visited was beautiful, and she responded that every place in France was beautiful. I retorted that every place is beautiful, meaning that every natural place I have been that hasn’t been desecrated by the overlay of civilization is beautiful. I remember being in a drizzling rain that smelled of cow shit in Amarillo, Texas – coincidencly on the way to another family re-u – and thinking the Texas plains are the uglyest place I’ve ever been. The next day, we went for a walk in a private park – yes, Texas has private parks – that celebrated the Texas plains, and remarked to Michele on the stunning beauty.

But our host was right, in France, at least in this part of the country, the overlay of civilization is softer and more integrated into the landscape.

As we got to the base of the mountains, I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. It felt like driving out of the Sierra Nevada mountains on Highway 120. We would drop down the Old Priest grade and the air would warm, then into the valley made by the Tuolumne River before it was filled by a lake made by a worthless dam, then the land would flatten, and then, just west of Escalon, in the heat, we would drive on a narrow section of road through the almond groves. It didn’t look the same, but it did feel the same (except for the hayfields).

Around Die At The Re-U

Photography, Travel

There are both Europeans and Americans at the re-u, and all the Americans have been to Europe more times than I’ve been to – hell, I don’t know – LA, and all of them speak at least two languages. I feel like a country bumpkin who wandered into a gathering of overachieving travelers.

I am not a Europhile – although I am a European car fan – I love California, especially the part of California where we live, but it is hard to shake the feeling, especially with this group, that Europe is more civilized and just plain more Civil than we Americans. The comparison between Greece during its Golden Age and Rome, which ruled the Mediterranean with sheer power, keeps coming to mind.

It is hot here – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/world/europe/europe-heat-wave-record-temperatures.html – with temperatures reaching close to 100F by mid-day, and it sucks the energy – energy I already have in short supply – out of me. Last Friday, we drove up a long, rough, gravel road to a view spot overlooking Die (photo in previous post). I didn’t take many photos, except for the spring flowers.

Saturday, we went to a small art show in a charming nearby village.

To be continued…

We Are At The Cousins’ ReU In Die, France, European Union

Travel

The thing that staggers you when you first come to France is the fact that all the French speak French—even the children. ~ Olivia de Havilland

After several false starts, we are now very much alive in Die. We flew to Barcelona, had an excellent dinner, slept, took the TGV high-speed train to Valence, France, rented a car, and drove to dinner at what I can only describe as an adult Party House. This is a shockingly beautiful part of the world that, two days ago, I only knew as a place on a map. Still, it is hot and humid and I am still recovering from both my bladder operation two weeks ago and my trans-Atlantic flight two days ago so I am whooped.