Place des Jacobins and the Fountain of the Four Artists

Why is it significant?

Step into the harmonious circular plaza of Place des Jacobins, widely celebrated as one of the most elegant urban squares in central Lyon.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step into the harmonious circular plaza of Place des Jacobins, widely celebrated as one of the most elegant urban squares in central Lyon. Established on the site of an ancient thirteenth-century Dominican monastery—whose friars were commonly known throughout France as Jacobins—the square was reshaped in the late nineteenth century to form a dignified radial roundabout. At the center stands the magnificent Fontaine des Jacobins, sculpted in 1885 by artist Gaspard André from gleaming white marble of Échaillon. Under a classical temple dome supported by polished Corinthian columns, André sculpted four monumental life-sized marble statues honoring Lyon's greatest artistic masters: architect Philibert Delorme, sculptor Guillaume Coustou, engraver Gérard Audran, and Renaissance painter Hippolyte Flandrin. The gentle splashing of water from lion-head spouts into cascading circular basins provides a soothing soundtrack to the vibrant street scene. Grand nineteenth-century bourgeois apartment buildings and elegant boutique shopfronts surround the plaza with impeccable architectural symmetry and decorative grace. The refined urban proportions create a delightful sense of harmony that enchants visitors and residents throughout all four seasons of the year.

Admire the four marble statues of the artists: each figure holds the authentic tools of their craft—Delorme with compasses, Coustou with a sculptor's chisel, Audran with an etching burin, and Flandrin with a painter's palette.

During the French Revolution, the Dominican convent was secularized and the square was renamed Place de la Fraternité, before housing the city's revolutionary tribunal during the darkest months of the Terror in 1793.

Notice the award-winning pedestrian paving: during the city's urban revitalization in 2013, the square was returned to pedestrians with warm sandstone slabs and soft ambient lighting that glows under evening street lamps.

Walk west along Rue Gaspard-André to discover the magnificent theatrical facade of the Théâtre des Célestins.