Cheap flights to Lyon

Quick summary

2,000 years of history

From Lugdunum to modern Lyon

Lyon's story starts on the Fourvière hill, where the Roman governor Lucius Munatius Plancus founded the colony of Lugdunum in 43 BCE. The site already carried meaning before Rome arrived — a settlement dedicated to the Gallic god Lug once stood here. Lugdunum grew fast: by 27 BCE it was capital of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis, the only city outside Rome allowed to mint gold and silver coins, and home to one of the empire's most extensive aqueduct networks. At its peak the Roman city spread across roughly 350 hectares, one of the largest in Gaul.

That deep history is still walkable today. The Gallo-Roman theatre on Fourvière, built in the 2nd century, now doubles as a summer concert and opera venue, and the Lugdunum museum next to it lays out the finds. It's a rare thing: a European capital where you can stand on the exact ground where the city began, more than two thousand years ago.

World capital of gastronomy

Why food critics crowned Lyon in 1935

In 1935, the influential food critic Curnonsky named Lyon "the world capital of gastronomy" — a title the city has defended ever since. Much of the credit goes back further, to the 19th century, when former cooks for Lyon's wealthy silk-trading families opened their own modest restaurants. Known as the "Mères Lyonnaises," these women essentially invented the bouchon lyonnais, the type of restaurant that still defines eating out in Lyon today: unfussy, generous, and built around local produce rather than technique for its own sake.

The best way to understand all this in one stop is Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, the city's landmark covered food market. Renamed in 2006 in honor of chef Paul Bocuse — the "Pope of French cuisine" and a daily presence there for decades — it now brings together close to 60 butchers, cheesemongers, bakers, fishmongers and wine merchants under one roof, several of them with counter seating for lunch on the spot.

UNESCO World Heritage

Vieux Lyon and its hidden traboules

Since December 1998, some 427 hectares of central Lyon — including Vieux Lyon, the Presqu'île and the Fourvière and Croix-Rousse hillsides — have carried UNESCO World Heritage status. Vieux Lyon itself is a dense grid of Renaissance townhouses at the foot of Fourvière, and the best way to explore it is to lose the map: about half of the city's roughly 400 traboules — covered passageways cutting through buildings from one street or courtyard to the next — are concentrated here.

The traboules weren't built for tourists. Some date back to the Renaissance, when they gave residents a dry route down to the river; others took on new life during Lyon's 19th-century silk boom, when the canuts — the city's roughly 30,000 silk workers — used them to move bolts of fabric between workshops without exposing the fragile silk to rain. During the Second World War, the same hidden network served the Resistance. Many traboules stay open to the public during the day; look for small plaques marking the entrances.

The city's landmark

Notre-Dame de Fourvière, watching over Lyon

Built between 1872 and 1896 on the site of the old Roman forum, the basilica sits atop the same hill where Lugdunum began. Its ornate towers are visible from most of the city, and each evening the building is lit up — a signature Lyon sight even outside the December festival. Climb up (on foot, or by funicular) and the panorama takes in the Rhône-Saône confluence, the terracotta roofs of Vieux Lyon and, on a clear day, the outline of the Alps far to the east.

Early December

The Fête des Lumières

The story goes back to 1643, when Lyon's leaders pledged an annual tribute to the Virgin Mary in exchange for protection from the plague. That tradition finally converged with a stroke of luck in 1852: a new statue of Mary was due to be installed on Fourvière on 8 September, but flooding delayed the ceremony to 8 December. When the skies unexpectedly cleared that evening, residents spontaneously lit candles — lumignons — on their windowsills to mark the occasion, a gesture that became an annual ritual. Since 1989 it has grown into a four-day international light festival, drawing up to four million visitors to see building facades, squares and entire neighborhoods transformed by projections and installations, Fourvière itself the centerpiece.

Museums and neighborhoods

Beyond the old town

Where the Rhône and Saône meet stands the Musée des Confluences, its angular, futuristic architecture as much a draw as the natural-history and anthropology collections inside. The Musée des Beaux-Arts, set in a former Benedictine abbey near Place des Terreaux, holds one of France's largest fine-art collections outside the Louvre. And when evening comes, the bars and terraces of Croix-Rousse — the old silk-weavers' hill — and the Rhône riverbanks are where Lyon actually goes out.

Day trips

Pérouges and the Beaujolais vineyards

About 35 km from Lyon, the walled medieval village of Pérouges is small enough to see in an afternoon and well preserved enough to have doubled as a film set more than once. In the other direction, the Beaujolais wine region starts as close as 25 km out and stretches north — an easy way to turn a Lyon trip into a day of vineyard visits and tastings without renting a car for long distances.

When to go

Lyon by season

Cost of a trip

Roughly what a day in Lyon costs

Lyon is noticeably cheaper than Paris for the same standard, especially for food — a proper bouchon meal is affordable in a way Parisian bistros rarely are. Budget travelers can get by on roughly €55–85 a day (hostel or budget hotel, markets and casual bouchon lunches, mostly on foot or by tram), while a comfortable mid-range trip — a 3-star hotel, a couple of sit-down bouchon dinners, local transport — tends to run around €130–180 a day.

Lyon airport

Lyon-Saint-Exupéry, a tram ride from downtown

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