Hôtel-Dieu

Like a dowager reclining on the banks of the river while her grandchildren frolic in the water, a once-stunning princess whose best days are long since behind her, the massive Hôtel-Dieu sprawls along the west side of the presque-île; the wedge of land in the centre of Lyon at the tip of which the city's two rivers, the Rhone and Saône, merge. For although it is one of the largest buildings in Lyon, it goes largely unnoticed by the people, cars and even the waters that rush by this locked and shuttered behemoth.