Musée des Tissus

Lyon was the silk capital of Europe for centuries, and the Musée des Tissus is the museum that tells the story of its cloth and of textiles from around the world. It was founded in the nineteenth century by the city's Chamber of Commerce, which wanted to give the silk manufacturers a collection of models and inspiration, and it is often described as the first museum in the world devoted to textiles. It is housed in the Hôtel de Villeroy, a handsome mansion of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on the Rue de la Charité, in the Presqu'île district, a short walk from the Place Bellecour. The building and its collections are currently the subject of renovation work, and a full reopening is planned for later in the decade, so visitors should check the status before planning a visit.

The silk industry began in Lyon in the sixteenth century, when King Francis I granted privileges to the city and Italian weavers settled here. Over the following centuries, the industry grew until it employed tens of thousands of workers, many of them in the hillside district of the Croix-Rousse, where the tall workshops built for the great looms still stand. The canuts, as the silk weavers were known, laboured at their looms in cramped conditions, and their revolts in the 1830s and 1840s are among the first great labour uprisings in France. In 1804, Joseph Marie Jacquard, a Lyon inventor, perfected a loom controlled by punched cards, an invention that is considered a forerunner of the computer. Lyon silks furnished the palaces of Europe, and Lyon's fabric designs set fashion.

The museum's collection reflects both the city's own production and a wide world of textiles. It shows about two thousand years of history, from the fabrics of ancient Egypt and the Coptic tapestries woven in the early Christian period, through Byzantine and Islamic silks, to Persian and Turkish carpets, medieval and Renaissance velvets from Italy and Spain, and the great Lyon silks of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, with their patterns of flowers, birds and brocades. Embroidery, printed cottons, lace and costumes complete the picture. Displays explain the techniques of weaving, dyeing and printing, and how designs were created and transmitted, and the fine work of the designers and weavers is evident in each piece.

The museum shares the building complex with the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, next door, which displays furniture, ceramics, tapestries and decorative objects of the eighteenth century in period rooms, and together they give a wide picture of luxury and domestic life in Lyon. Exhibitions are held periodically, even when the main collections are closed, so there may be opportunities to see parts of the collection.

Lyon offers other places to explore the silk story. The Croix-Rousse hill, with its covered passages called traboules, once used by the weavers to carry fabric, and the Maison des Canuts, a small museum with a working loom, are a short trip away. The Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Vieux-Lyon, the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée Gadagne are other sights, and Les Halles Paul Bocuse is the place for food. The museum suits those interested in design, fashion and industrial history. Admission is free for children under 12 and for holders of the Lyon City Card.