What it is
At the foot of the Croix-Rousse stood the sanctuary where the sixty nations of Gaul gathered each year to worship Rome and Augustus. Its amphitheatre is dated by an inscription to AD 19, paid for by an aristocratic Gallic family from Saintes.
Why it matters
It is also remembered as a place of martyrdom for the early Christians of Lyon. The remains have been protected as a historic monument since 1961.
Much is gone — what you see is the lower part of the arena, sunk into the slope of a quiet residential quarter. It is the contrast with the busy streets around it that makes it.
Where Gaul swore loyalty to Rome
The amphitheater belonged to the federal sanctuary of the Three Gauls, set up in 12 BC at the request of Nero Claudius Drusus, a member of the imperial family and father of the future emperor Claudius. Here the sixty Gaulish nations gathered each year to celebrate the cult of Rome and Augustus, an assembly generally held on August 1. Why that date was chosen is debated: it may continue a Celtic festival of the god Lug, or mark the anniversary of Claudius's birth or of the battle of Actium. Lugdunum's special status also rested on the second imperial mint, an urban cohort and the collection of taxes from the federated nations.
Exactly where the altar stood is still argued over. The archaeologist Amable Audin imagined a vast esplanade 296 meters long facing a cliff, modeled on the sanctuary of Fortuna at Praeneste, with the altar on a podium beside the amphitheater, but his reconstruction is largely intuitive. For a long time the sanctuary was even placed on the Ainay side of the peninsula, a theory now refuted.
The oldest amphitheater in Gaul
An inscription found on site in 1957 dates the first amphitheater to 19 AD. It was paid for by Caius Julius Rufus, a priest of Rome and Augustus from an old aristocratic family of Saintes, with his son; stones carved with the names of Gaulish nations, the Arverni, Tricasses and Bituriges, confirm the link with the sanctuary. The arena measured 67.6 by 42 meters, close to those of Nîmes and Arles, but with probably only four tiers of seats the building was small, about 1,800 places, enough for the delegations of the sixty nations. It is the oldest amphitheater in Gaul. At first it served only the delegates who met here each year: offering them entertainment was shrewd politics for Rufus, and in an age that thought more and more in terms of family dynasties, he made sure his son shared the credit.
Enlarged for the whole city
At some later date two galleries were added around it, bringing it to 143.3 by 117.35 meters and about 20,000 seats, comparable to Nîmes or Arles, and opening it to everyone in Lugdunum and the surrounding area. The enlargement is conventionally dated to the reign of Hadrian, in the 130s, from a fragmentary inscription that some scholars link to a governor of the province; others find that reading too bold. The spectacles set gladiators and beast fighters, slaves, condemned prisoners and wild animals against each other. Historians place here the execution in the summer of 177 of six of the martyrs of Lyon, among them Saint Blandina and Saint Pothinus.
The original podium was surrounded by a ring of radiating walls and vaults carrying much steeper seats, and the arena wall was topped by an iron safety rail. Two elliptical galleries about 10.5 meters apart supported the tiers, reached by vaulted passages.
Rediscovered
After it was abandoned, the site served as a quarry. A sixteenth-century plan of Lyon still shows a few arches and a hollow, called the Corbeille de la Déserte, where the arena had been. Renaissance scholars knew of it from ancient writers: Suetonius mentions games held here, Juvenal gives a clue to its location, Tacitus tells of the execution of the rebel Mariccus during Vitellius's stay in Lyon, and Eusebius preserves the Lyon Christians' account of the martyrdom of 177.
The first excavations, from 1818 to 1820, revealed the outline of the arena, but the site was filled in again, and nineteenth-century street building destroyed the southern part. Serious excavation began in 1956, with further campaigns in 1966–1967, 1971–1972 and 1976–1978. In 1965 Amable Audin uncovered the southern section beneath Rue Lucien-Sportisse and advised keeping it visible, but he was not heeded. What survives, retaining walls for about half the building, is set into the Jardin des Plantes and can be visited. It has been a classified historic monument since November 27, 1961. In January 2026 new preventive digs beside the remains turned up bones of wild animals, bears and panthers, wild boar, roe deer and hares, as well as a burial.
Sources
- Amphithéâtre des Trois Gaules — Wikipédia (French)
- Sanctuaire fédéral des Trois Gaules — Wikipédia (French)
- Pentes de la Croix-Rousse — Wikipédia (French)
