Anyone who knows me knows I am a firm believer that historical knowledge makes a trip so much richer, which is exactly why I highly recommend that anyone heading to Paris read my article on the history of Paris.
Since Lyon is the second most important city in France, it’s only natural that it has a history just as rich and fascinating as that of the City of Light, its great rival. The goal of this article is to bring you the story of Lyon in a compact way (we’re on the internet, after all), while still giving you a basic sense of what you’re looking at and what happened in the streets and alleys you’ll be walking through.
Please step into the time machine with me, we’re heading about two thousand years back.
From Lugdunum to Lyon
The settlement that would eventually become the city of Lyon was founded in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus (c. 87 BC – 15 BC), deputy to Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul.
The city’s first inhabitants were mostly veteran soldiers of Julius Caesar, who had been granted estates in Gaul, along with local residents. Within a few years, the city became the Roman capital of Gaul and reached a peak population of about 50,000 (an enormous number for the time).
The Roman colony from which Lyon would develop was established on the Fourvière hill and was called Lugdunum, meaning “the desired hill.” Since this was the capital of Gaul, it’s no surprise that the largest amphitheater in Gaul (it could hold up to 20,000 people) was built there, and to our good fortune, its remains can still be seen today in the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse neighborhood.
Next to the amphitheater stood an altar, where all the leaders of Gaul would gather once a year to swear allegiance to the Roman emperor. Unfortunately, this altar has disappeared, and archaeologists are still searching for it.
In 10 BC, Lugdunum saw the birth of the future emperor Claudius (familiar to many from the wonderful series “I, Claudius”). When Claudius became emperor, he allowed the city’s nobility to be elected to the Senate in Rome, and to make sure everyone knew it, he had the decree engraved on bronze tablets. These bronze tablets were found not far from the amphitheater, which is why the street where they were discovered is still called Rue des Tables Claudiennes today.
After the emergence of Christianity, Lugdunum became home to the first Christian community in Gaul, led by Saint Irenaeus (c. 130-202), who was a disciple of a disciple of Jesus himself. This close connection between the founder of Lyon’s Christian community and Jesus is the reason why the Bishop of Lyon received the title “Primate of the Gauls” (Primat de Gaules).
Of course, just as in the case of Saint-Denis, the Romans weren’t exactly fond of the new religion that had “settled in” among them, and during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, quite a few of these Christians became the main attraction at the amphitheater of Lyon, serving as a snack for wild animals.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the infrastructure of the city on Fourvière hill began to decline, and once the aqueduct that supplied water to the hill collapsed, the residents had no choice but to abandon the hill and rebuild the city closer to the river.
Lyon in the Middle Ages
You might be surprised to learn that Lyon wasn’t actually part of France until 1312. Before that, it was part of the Holy Roman Empire. About 150 years before Lyon became part of the French kingdom, construction began on its cathedral, and as with other cathedrals, such as Notre-Dame de Paris, it took several hundred years for the construction to be completed.
In the case of Lyon’s cathedral, we’re talking about three hundred years (construction began in 1180 and finished in 1480), which makes it the second-oldest Gothic building in France, after the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
This cathedral holds additional historical significance, since it was here that Pope Clement V (reigned 1305-1314) was crowned. He later decided to move the papacy from Rome to the city of Avignon, marking the start of a long exile that lasted about 70 years.
According to accounts, during the coronation a wall collapsed under the weight of the large crowd leaning against it, and quite a few people were killed. The Pope, badly shaken, lost one of his gemstones in the chaos, which has never been found to this day, and has kept more than a few would-be “Indiana Joneses” busy searching for it.
If you want to discover the Lyon of the early and late Middle Ages, you should visit the neighborhood known as “Old Lyon” (Vieux Lyon), and I promise you that in the future you’ll be able to find a walking route here to help you uncover its secrets.
Lyon in the Renaissance
During the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Lyon developed extensive trade with kingdoms, principalities and republics from the Italian peninsula. Why did Lyon become such an important trading center? Because it was home to the only bridge over the Rhône, so merchants from the Italian peninsula were forced to pass through Lyon on their way to Paris and other cities in the north of France.
So it’s no surprise that quite a few merchants settled in Lyon and turned it into an important trading hub for silk, which arrived from Florence, along with other luxury goods. All of this became official in the late 15th century, when King Charles VIII (reigned 1483-1498) granted Lyon the right to hold four annual fairs at Place Au Change, and Lyon became a major commercial center.
In 1536, King Francis I (reigned 1515-1547) granted Lyon the right to produce silk, and the silk industry quickly became the most important industry in the city (alongside trade and finance). The business was controlled by about 300 merchants, who traded silk produced in roughly 8,000 workshops, employing around 40,000 weavers, often under miserable conditions.
These wealthy merchants began building themselves grand houses in Lyon, some of which, like the Maison Tomassin, still stand today.
The Italian presence in the city, combined with the fact that the king’s armies passed through on their way to and from attempts to conquer the Italian peninsula, turned Lyon into something of a “Renaissance capital of France.” That’s why some of the most important Renaissance architects in France came from here, including Philibert Delorme (1514-1570), known to us as the first architect of the Renaissance palace at Fontainebleau.
These architects left us some of the most impressive architectural gems in Lyon, chief among them the Hôtel de Bullioud, located on Rue de la Juiverie (literally “Street of the Jews”), because, as we know, wherever there’s money, our people tend to show up too (just kidding).
If you thought that during the Renaissance the French spent all their time building palaces and importing delicious food from Italy, you’d be wrong. This was also the era of the Wars of Religion (1559-1598), during which a great deal of blood was spilled. These wars affected Lyon too: in 1562 the Protestants managed to seize control of the city, and in a wide campaign of vandalism they destroyed many beautiful statues in the local cathedral.
The Making of Modern Lyon (17th-19th Centuries)
In 1643, Lyon’s city leaders decided, as a gesture of gratitude for having been spared from a plague, to dedicate the city to the Virgin Mary and build a church in her honor. They chose to place it on the Fourvière hill, which had been abandoned since the early Middle Ages, and built a relatively small and modest church there. But in the 19th century, to celebrate the fact that the Prussians never laid siege to Lyon, it was decided to upgrade the church, and the result is the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière.
In the late 18th century, the French Revolution broke out. Although the revolution began in Paris, it spread across the entire country and sparked something close to a civil war, as some cities and regions refused to support the central government. Lyon was one of the rebel cities, and to crush the uprising, Joseph Fouché (1759-1821), the future mythical police minister under Napoleon, was sent there.
Fouché wasted no time and began slaughtering the rebels (including women and children) by tying them to posts and firing cannons at them. It’s no wonder Fouché earned the nickname “the Butcher of Lyon,” and the massacre he carried out left a deep scar on the city’s history.
In the early 19th century, a major revolution swept through the silk industry, which, as you read earlier, was one of the pillars of Lyon’s economy. In 1804, Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) invented a mechanized loom that allowed a single person to weave silk, a job that had previously required two people.
This loom worked using punch cards that could be used to program the machine, making it a kind of primitive “computer.” Of course, not everyone was thrilled with the invention, and in 1831 Lyon saw an uprising of silk workers who had been left unemployed. Today only a handful of people in the city still know how to operate a loom, and most of the industry has long since moved to the Far East. So passes the glory of the world…
By the way, the loom wasn’t the only thing to come out of Lyon. There’s another invention that most people mistakenly believe originated in Paris: I’m talking of course about the bateaux-mouches. These river boats, which became an inseparable part of the Paris experience, were actually built at the Mouche shipyards in Lyon in 1867, to let tourists visiting Paris for that year’s World’s Fair cruise the Seine easily and comfortably.
The 20th Century: Between Occupation and the Resistance
In 1940, France was occupied by the Nazis and split into two zones: the occupied zone and the “free” Vichy zone, which included Lyon. The city also housed a very important Resistance cell led by Jean Moulin (1899-1943).
Jean Moulin, who had fled to England with de Gaulle, was parachuted back into Provence and made a long journey that eventually brought him to Lyon. There he lived in several apartments around Place Carnot, near the Gare de Perrache.
Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), the head of the Gestapo in Lyon, who, like Fouché, earned the nickname “the Butcher of Lyon,” led a long manhunt for Jean Moulin and eventually managed to capture him after the Resistance leader was betrayed by one of his own associates. Barbie tortured Jean Moulin brutally, and he died of his wounds on a train bound for Germany.
For more on the Resistance in Lyon, you can read Dr. Orna Liberman’s article on Virginia Hall, the American spy who rushed to help occupied France, a key figure in the French Resistance network. From 1941 to 1943, Virginia Hall’s apartment in Lyon became a top-tier center of operations. In 1942, Gestapo headquarters ordered the capture of “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.”
Klaus Barbie seethed with rage and was ready to do anything to eliminate her. Virginia insisted on staying at her post even after “wanted” posters with her face went up around the city and a bounty was placed on her head. In the end, reluctantly, she had to follow orders from her handlers and leave Lyon.
After the war, Barbie managed to flee France (with help from none other than the CIA) and later became an intelligence officer in the Bolivian army. But after a democratic party came to power in Bolivia, Klaus Barbie was extradited to France and sentenced in Lyon to life in prison in 1987. He died in prison in 1991.
The Culinary Capital of France
You can’t talk about the history of Lyon without mentioning the field that made the city famous far and wide: gastronomy!
The reason Lyon is known around the world for its food is the rural countryside surrounding it, which supplies excellent produce: fruits, vegetables, meats (for example Bresse chickens) and cheeses. The fact that every chef in Lyon could get fresh produce on a daily basis made Lyon the culinary capital back in the days before refrigerators were invented.
In the late 19th century, the first “bouchon” restaurants began to open. These are small restaurants serving traditional, home-style food (especially meats, sausages and offal, which became an integral part of Lyonnaise cuisine). These restaurants were founded by women who wanted to help their families earn some extra money while their husbands worked in the silk trade and other industries.
One example of such a bouchon is “La Mère Brazier” (La mère Brazier Restaurant), which still exists today. Eugénie Brazier (1895-1977) grew up in the countryside around Lyon and had to move into the city to make a living. She began working at one of the local bouchons, and being extremely talented, she opened her own bouchon in 1921. It was a huge success and earned 3 Michelin stars. But Brazier didn’t rest on her laurels and opened a second bouchon, which also earned three Michelin stars!
Many famous chefs, Paul Bocuse (1926-2018) chief among them, worked at this restaurant and learned the secrets of French cuisine there. Bocuse went on to become one of the most famous chefs in France, and he played a crucial role in preserving Lyon’s status as the culinary capital of France throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Over the course of his life, Bocuse founded not only Michelin-starred restaurants, but also a famous culinary school and a food market named after him, where you’ll find the best of Lyonnaise cuisine and a large fresco depicting the chef himself. It’s no wonder the whole city holds him in such regard, even the parking inspectors never dared give him a ticket, even though he used to park his car on the sidewalk outside his market.
Finished reading about the history of Lyon? What’s next?
Now that you’ve finished reading about the history of Lyon, you’re welcome to start planning your trip.
- Looking for a good hotel? Check out my article on recommended hotels in Lyon that I’ve handpicked for you.
- Want to know what’s worth doing in Lyon? Check out my article on what to do in Lyon: attractions, walking routes, guided tours and more.
- Looking for a good restaurant? Check out my article on restaurants in Lyon: where to eat in France’s culinary capital.
- If all that isn’t enough and you’re looking for more information, head over to the page Lyon and the surrounding area: a traveler’s guide.
Related reading