What it is
The historic Palais de Justice stands on the right bank of the Saône in Vieux Lyon, and Lyon calls it simply les vingt-quatre colonnes — the twenty-four columns of its river front.
The architect Louis-Pierre Baltard won the competition for it; building ran from 1835 to 1847. It still houses the court of assizes and the court of appeal.
Seeing it
The best view is from the Presqu'île bank, across the Saône, or from the footbridge in front of it — the colonnade reflected in the water is one of the classic views of the city. See The Two Rivers.
Courts on this spot since the Middle Ages
Once Lyon became part of France, royal justice set up in the Maison de Roanne in the heart of the city, and from the fifteenth century it was a house of justice. After it burned in 1622, a first courthouse, the Palais de Roanne, was built, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was in ruins. Two plans to replace it, one in 1764 and another approved in 1808, ran out of money.
A reform of the court system relaunched the project in 1828, when the land was bought and Louis-Pierre Baltard won the architecture competition. His first design reached partly into the Saône, with a prison built on fill in the river below the Pont du Change; a commission judged that part inadequate, and only the courthouse on the site of the Maison de Roanne was built. Work ran from 1835 to 1847, and the result is counted among the finest neoclassical buildings in France. It was meant to be majestic and imposing, open to all, and able to hold many hearings and the prisoners brought to them.
Stone and sculpture
The building is in cut stone from the quarries of Villebois, Tournus, Crussol and Cruas, with timber roof frames. On the Rue Saint-Jean side, statues of Strength and Justice were carved by François Félix Roubaud between 1857 and 1862. Inside, the great entrance hall, the salle des pas perdus, covers 625 square meters and rises 17 meters. It holds two reliefs: one by Jean-François Legendre-Héral of the city of Lyon welcoming the fine arts, commerce, industry and agriculture, and one by Guillaume Bonnet of Justice punishing Crime. A plaque there honors Judge François Renaud, an investigating magistrate at the courthouse who was murdered in Lyon on July 3, 1975.
Trials that made history
In August 1894 the Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio, who had assassinated President Sadi Carnot, was sentenced to death here. In January 1945 the writer Charles Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaborating with Germany. In July 1987 Klaus Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed in 1943 and 1944. In June 1989 the Lyon branch of the terrorist group Action Directe was sentenced to life for thirty-four armed robberies and three murders.
The courthouse today
In 1995 a new courthouse opened in the Part-Dieu district and took most of the courts, so this building became the historic courthouse, still home to the court of appeal and the Rhône assize court. A major renovation from 2008 to 2012 made it accessible to people with reduced mobility and improved its security, and it reopened on January 14, 2013, for the court of appeal's formal opening session. The same year a sculpture by Michael Elmgreen and Ingmar Dragset, The Weight of Oneself, was installed facing it as part of the riverbank redevelopment. Claude Lelouch filmed the final scene of his 1992 film Tout ça... pour ça! here. Its interior decoration is classified as a historic monument.
The Barbie trial
The Barbie trial, held before the Rhône assize court from May 11 to July 3, 1987, was the first trial in France for crimes against humanity. Barbie had already been tried in absentia for war crimes between 1952 and 1954, so the investigation, opened in 1983, kept only crimes against humanity: the raid on the offices of the Union générale des israélites de France on February 9, 1943, the roundup of the Jewish children of Izieu on April 6, 1944, and the last convoy to leave Lyon for Auschwitz, on August 11, 1944; a fourth charge, covering individual arrests, torture and deportations of Jews and Resistance members, was added by the highest court in 1985.
The main assize courtroom was too small for the 113 civil parties, the witnesses, the public and the press, so the great hall was fitted out, without harming its historic decoration, as a temporary courtroom for 750 people. Some 900 journalists followed the trial, which was filmed in full, producing 145 hours of proceedings. Barbie announced on the third day that he would not attend, and was made to appear only on certain days. The verdict, life imprisonment, came in the early hours of July 4, 1987. In 2017 the full case file was opened to the public.
Sources
- Palais de justice historique de Lyon — Wikipédia (French)
- Procès de Klaus Barbie — Wikipédia (French)
