Collegiate and citadel
The collegiate church, also called the chapel of the Holy Spirit, was built between 1310 and 1326 by the brotherhood of the Work of the Holy Spirit, after authorization from Philip the Fair, in order to welcome the sick, the poor and abandoned children.
Its chapel, built in 1319, adopts the northern Gothic style: a single nave extended by a choir and a pentagonal apse, with a bay allowing the sick to attend services.
Between 1475 and 1477, the architect Blaise Lécuyer completed the nave and created the southern portal in flamboyant Gothic style, adorned with curly cabbage. This masterpiece, combining rigor and elegance, was classified as a historical monument in 1910. He remains the main witness of the artistic and spiritual ambition of the place.
Overlooking the Rhône, the citadel was a major strategic point. After the city was taken by the Protestants, then returned to the hands of the Catholics, the governor Alphonse d'Ornano built a fortress between 1585 and 1595. Under Louis XIII, between 1621 and 1627, Jean de Beins built a pentagonal citadel with bastions. Vauban then strengthened the defenses in the 17th century.
Gradually, it lost its military role and fell into disuse in the 19th century. Occupied during the Second World War, it served as a prison: more than a thousand resistance fighters were held there and several hundred were executed.
Bombed in 1944, it was demolished in 1947. Today, only a few vestiges remain, witnesses of its strategic past and the conflicts that marked it.
