France 2026 - Day 7 - Burrowing into Lyon

 My plan today is to dig into the history of Lyon as much as I can. I took advantage of my one-day pass for Lyon to use the metro and the tram to jump from one location to the other, and I even got to ride the funicular up the hill from Vieux Lyon to the top of the bluff to visit again the Roman museum and the two Roman forums.

 

Trying to remain historically chronologic I will mention first the Roman museum. When Julius Caesar conquered Gaulle, the area was divided into Belgian Gaulle to the north, Lyonnais Gaulle in the center, and Acquitaine Gaulle in the south. Lugdunum, on the east end of the Lyonnais Gaul became the most important hub of the whole of Gaulle because of its access to the Rhône. Lugdunum must have been very vast because they keep discovering Roman foundations all over the place, but most of it is covered by the modern city. Of note, emperor Claudius was born in Lugdunum (he followed Tiberius and Caligula).

 

The Roman museum is very cool, but the forums were a bit disappointing. Not because they were not magnificent in scale, but because they have been rehabilitated as concert venues, and the modernity of these installations clashes with the ancient architecture. Did I already mention that Lugdunum was founded in 43 BC? Claudius was emperor sometime around 45 AD).

 

The medieval Lyon was a small town at the foot of the bluff and probably inundated regularly by the Sôen, but enjoyed the luxury of a bridge over the Rhône and a bridge over the Sôen, so it was able to host first two and at the end four commercial fairs every year. Commercial fairs were the gate to prosperity of the medieval world, so Lyon grew to be a very prosperous town. In addition, the Rhône was the main venue for transporting wine (Beaujolais wine), olive oil, and fish meal down to Marseille, and Lyon had the distinction of being the place where bulk merchandise got divided into small barrels for direct trade.

The comment one hears here in Lyon is that the city has three rivers: the Rhône, the Sône, and the flow of Beaujolais wine. To celebrate the confluence of the two rivers the Rhône is represented as a young and powerful man, who shelters in his arms the delicate feminine form of the Sône.

Because the Vieux Lyon is long but not very deep, merchandise had to be brought to high ground in some efficient way, so the Lyonaise opened passages perpendicular to the long streets, called taboule. These passages, of which there must be at least a hundred, have regular doors so from the outside they look like the entrance to an apartment building, but if you know where they are you just open the door and walk in, getting to take a look at the rear portion of several apartment buildings. In fact, some of the apartments use the taboule as the regular way of reaching their homes.

I should mention here that Lyon was the place where the first book in French (La Légende Dorée by Jacobus de Voragine) was printed, following closely on the footsteps of Gutenberg in Germany.

Much later, in the 18th century, Lyon became the center of silk weaving, starting a long tradition of French carpets and tapestries. Unfortunately, that was one museum I didn't get to, so I cannot provide further details. On the same vein, I was not able to visit the home of Ampere because it is a few kilometers outside of Lyon, but I mention him here as one of the distinguished Lyonaise.

In the 1800's the Lumiere brothers (Louis and August) and their father, Antoine, became a prominent industrial family because of Louis' interest in optics, photography, and film. Their factory was the French equivalent of Eastman Kodak and produced cameras, films, and even medicines (August was a doctor). The big invention, however, was the movie camera, the strip film, and the projection of the film to create a movie! It was an exhilarating time for the visual arts.

The Resistance and Deportation Museum brought me to the bitter time of World War II. Lyon was within the area covered by the Vichy regime, which folded its hands to the pressure of Nazi Germany and became occupied territory. To its honor, Lyon became the birthplace of the Resistance, and there is a long list of names of the guérilla fighters who fought the Nazi advance by all means possible. The Nazis relocated many of the "undesirables" to concentration camps, and Lyon was one of the hubs for those deportations until, after the war, was able to welcome back the survivors of the Holocaust.

Finally we come to the modern age, which is celebrated in the Musée des Confluences, an ultramodern building at the confluence of the two rivers, where the ancient collection of curiosities accumulated over centuries has been arranged in parallel with the scientific history of the Earth, the evolution of life, and the rise of ancient and modern cultures. A very innovative way of putting together a museum.

And that is it. I am exhausted after a day of playing hard tourism and tomorrow will hop on a plane to land in Frankfurt and visit my dear friends Chrissy and Gustav, together with the remainder of the Kobberger family and related friends.