Département: Rhône
Lyons (in French spelling Lyon), France's second largest industrial and commercial city, is well situated at the junction of the navigable Rhône and Saône. It is the chief town of the département of Rhône and the see of an archbishop, with a university and a
college of technology.
Lyons has long been the principal center of the French textile industry, and in particular of silk production, but it also has a variety of other industries, notably the chemical and metalworking industries.
The Lyons Trade Fair, held annually in spring, provides a general survey of the city's industry and commerce.
Many notable figures were born in Lyons or lived and worked in the city, among them François Rabelais, who worked as a doctor in the Lyons hospital and wrote his principal works here, the physicist A.-M. Ampère, the writer Antoine de St-Exupéry, the inventor of the sewing machine, Barthélemy Thimonnier, the inventor of the jacquard loom, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the Montgolfier brothers, who constructed the first hot-air balloon, and the inventors of the cinematograph, Louis and Auguste Lumière, who moved from Besançon to Lyons.
The main part of the city, with the most important government offices and museums, lies on the Presqu'Ile, the peninsula 5km/3mi long and 600-800 m/660-880yd across between the Rhône in the east and the narrower Saône in the west. On higher ground to the north is the suburb of La Croix- Rousse. On the right bank of the Saône are the hill of Fourvière, the site of the Roman town, and the former suburb of Valse; on the left bank are the former suburb of La Guillotière and the district of Les Brotteaux, beyond which is the modern district of La Part-Dieu. The city is steadily expanding farther east. The rivers are lined with fine embankments and spanned by numerous bridges.
In the time of the Gauls Lyons (Lugdunum) was already a place of some importance. In 42 B.C. it became a Roman colony, and in the time of Augustus capital of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis. At the end of the second century A.D. there was a ruthless persecution of Christians in the town. In 1033 Lyons, along with the rest of Burgundy, became part of the German Empire; then in the early 14th C. the County of Lyonnais (now represented by the départements of Loire and Rhône) passed to France. During the French Revolution, in 1793, the Convention ordered the destruction of Lyons as a reprisal for the expulsion of the Jacobins after they had retaken the city - an operation in which 6,000 citizens of Lyons perished.
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