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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

La Maison La Prévoté is an aristocratic building built in the 2nd quarter of the 17th century on Barbe Island in Lyon. It rises to the location of the former house of the abbey provosts, of which Claude de Laboureur, holder of this office from 1629, shaped the present aspect. The building is distinguished by an Italian-style gallery on three levels on the eastern façade, a stone façade overlooking Notre-Dame Square, and two bell towered pavilions. One housed the entrance and one work room, the other protected a staircase serving cellar and floors. This monument is part of the history of the abbey of Barbe Island, secularized in 1551, whose remains – like a Romanesque tympanic door identified in 2011-2012 – still bear witness to the monastic past.

Barbe Island, a place of pilgrimage in the 16th century, concentrated its religious buildings to the north, including a cloister now extinct. The Provost reuses a 30 metre section of wall, a former frame support of the monastic corridor, which became a fence wall on the Saint-Loup impasse. This wall once linked the southern arm of the cloister to the refectory of the monks. After the Revolution, the great abbey church was dismantled, erasing a large part of the architectural ensemble, known by ancient representations. Only isolated elements remain, such as the Romanesque door, the only preserved opening of the cloister.

Classified as a Historic Monument by order of October 29, 2018, the Provost Marshal includes in its protection the entire house, its plot and its fence walls. Its official address, 3 chemin du Bas-Port (Lyon 9e), corresponds to the historic location of the abbey fence. The site illustrates the transition from medieval abbey heritage to Renaissance civil architecture, marked by Italian influence and post-secularization transformations.

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