Lugdunum
Lyon was founded on Fourvière in 43 BC and became the capital of Roman Gaul. The emperor Claudius was born here. The theatres, the amphitheatre of the Three Gauls and the Lugdunum museum are what remain.
The Renaissance city
⭐ In the Renaissance, Lyon became one of Europe's great trading cities and a financial centre, and its prosperity rested on two trades above all: printing and silk. The houses of Vieux Lyon are that wealth made visible.
The canuts
By the eighteenth century the silk industry had made Lyon the first working-class city in France. The weavers — the canuts — of the Croix-Rousse worked on the Jacquard loom, invented by a Lyonnais, and their revolts in the nineteenth century shaped European social thought.
The Lumières
In 1895 the Lumière brothers shot their first film at their factory in Monplaisir — the start of cinema, remembered at the Institut Lumière.
