Cour des Loges Lyon, A Radisson Collection Hotel

Behind a modest doorway on the rue du Bœuf, in the oldest part of Lyon, lies a courtyard nobody would guess at from the street. Arcades climb above one another on every side, and seventeen metres up a glass roof keeps the weather out. Down below, tables are laid for dinner. In French these open galleries are called loges, which is also the word for a box at the theatre, and at Cour des Loges the two meanings get along beautifully. The courtyard is the stage, and the galleries are where the audience lives.

The hotel around it is really four houses that never quite merged. Italian merchants raised the oldest walls nearly seven hundred years ago, and the houses have been one hotel of sixty-one rooms for almost forty, lately restored from top to bottom and reopened in 2025 under the Radisson name. Six courtyards and private passages, like the traboules outside, tie them together, so the way to a room can involve a staircase and a gallery or two. The head concierge says a guest becomes the guest of all the houses at once, and that is how it feels.

The rooms keep the quirks of the houses they sit in. Walls are rarely straight and old beams cross many of the ceilings, while the furniture stays modern and quiet so the old house can take the lead. Rooms with windows onto the courtyard are the real boxes, with the stage just below, and some of the suites add a fireplace. The Duplex and Superior rooms are the smallest and best kept for a short stay.

Before dinner, the hotel offers two ways to escape the old town without leaving it. Down under brick vaults, the spa keeps an indoor pool modelled on a Roman bath, with a hammam beside it. Up above, the hanging gardens give a patch of green and quiet over the rooftops.

Then the courtyard fills. Anthony Bonnet has cooked at Les Loges for more than twenty years, and his tasting menu leans on what he forages and on vegetables from his own garden. Under the glass it is a terrace that never gets rained on, whatever the season, and the galleries look straight down onto the tables, which is exactly what a loge was built for. Later, the snug bar by the street door takes over, with a piano and a deep wine list.

A little planning helps. Room sizes and shapes are as uneven as the walls, so it pays to choose carefully, and on nights when a long tasting menu feels like too much, Le Comptoir, next door, serves simpler Lyonnais dishes in bistro style. Outside, the old town is crowded with visitors by day. The hotel's natural audience is travellers who come to Lyon to eat and to wander, and who would rather sleep inside the old town than look at it from across the river.

At the theatre, the audience has to find its way home when the curtain falls. At the Cour des Loges, it simply climbs the spiral staircase to its box.