In 1646, the "consuls" of Lyon commissioned Simon Maupin to build a Town Hall which would do justice to their prestige and importance.
Maupin was assisted in this undertaking by the mathematician Girard Desargues, and the fresco-painter Thomas Blanchet.
The architect Hardouin-Mansart refurbished the building following a fire, and raised the façade looking out on Place des Terreaux so that it would not seem incongruous alongside the neighbouring façade of the Palais Saint-Pierre.
Some of the internal decorations date from the Second Empire, when Senator Vaïsse, who was also Prefect and Mayor, lived on the premises.

The building ot the Town Hall (1646-1651) and the convent of the Sisters of St Peter (1659-1687), now the Fine Art Museum, gave the square the form we know today. The scene of many highly charged events in the 19th century, the Place des Terreaux came to epitomise the city's political and artistic life with the arrival in 1892 of the Bartholdi fountain, originally designed for a square in Bordeaux.

A hectic century later the fountain was part of the thoroughgoing renovation of the square, with the addition of 69 sparkling ground-level fountains created by airtist Daniel Buren and architect Christian Drevet.