10 Top Places to Visit in Lyon

The Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière crowns the hill of the same name at 130 metres above the river, its four octagonal towers and gleaming white limestone visible from almost anywhere in central Lyon. Construction began in 1872 and finished in 1884 as a thank-offering after the city was spared during the Franco-Prussian War, with the interior mosaics and stained glass completed over the following decades. The style is a deliberate hybrid of Byzantine and Romanesque, and the inside is spectacular: gilded ceilings, marble columns quarried from six different countries, and mosaic panels depicting the life of the Virgin. A smaller 12th-century chapel sits alongside the main church, and the crypt below holds the tomb of Saint Joseph. Entry to the basilica and crypt is free; guided rooftop tours run April to November for EUR 10 and climb to a walkway with panoramic views stretching to Mont Blanc on clear days. Reach the summit by riding the funicular from Vieux Lyon station (part of the TCL network, valid with any metro ticket).

Pro Tip: The Fourvière funicular has two lines that both leave from the same station - take the one signed "Fourvière" not "Saint-Just", which stops halfway. First morning departures are around 06:00 and the last down is close to 22:00; going up at sunset gives you the basilica interior in daylight and the city lights on the descent.

A few hundred metres downhill from the basilica sits the oldest Roman theatre in France, built into the Fourvière hillside around 15 BCE under Emperor Augustus and later expanded to seat 10,000 spectators. A smaller Odeon theatre from the 2nd century CE lies beside it, along with the foundations of a temple to the imperial cult and stretches of Roman road still bearing chariot ruts. The site is open-air and free to enter every day. Adjacent to the ruins, the Lugdunum Museum (formerly Musée Gallo-Romain) is buried into the hillside so you barely notice it from outside; inside, a spiral concrete ramp leads past mosaics, bronze tablets recording the speech of Emperor Claudius to the Roman Senate, and gladiator artefacts. Museum admission is EUR 4 for adults, free on the first Sunday of the month. Every summer in June and July the theatre hosts the Nuits de Fourvière festival, with concerts and dance performances staged in the ancient auditorium.

Pro Tip: Walk down from the basilica rather than taking the funicular back - the Chemin du Rosaire is a stepped garden path passing the theatres on the way to Vieux Lyon, cutting out a ticket and adding some of the best free viewpoints in the city. Wear grippy shoes as the stones can be slick after rain.

The Presqu'île is Lyon's central peninsula, a narrow 500-metre-wide strip of land between the Rhône and Saône that holds the city's main shopping streets, opera house and grandest squares. At its heart is Place Bellecour, one of the largest pedestrian squares in Europe at 62,000 square metres, laid out in the 17th century and dominated by a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV cast in 1825. Rue de la République runs north from Bellecour up to Place des Terreaux, a broad terracotta plaza framed by the 17th-century Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, with a monumental fountain by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (sculptor of the Statue of Liberty) at its centre. The whole peninsula sits inside the UNESCO Historic Site of Lyon. Take Metro Line A or D to Bellecour, the main interchange, or Line A to Hôtel de Ville - Louis Pradel for Terreaux.

Pro Tip: The 8 December Fête des Lumières transforms Bellecour and Terreaux into open-air light installations for four nights; if you visit during those dates, book accommodation months ahead as hotel prices roughly double. Any other time, walking the length of Rue de la République from Bellecour to Terreaux takes about 15 minutes and covers most of Presqu'île's landmarks in one stretch.

Occupying a former 17th-century Benedictine convent on Place des Terreaux, the Musée des Beaux-Arts is one of the largest fine-art museums in France, second in scale only to the Louvre. Its 70 galleries hold works spanning 5,000 years, from Egyptian antiquities and Greek pottery through medieval sculpture to a strong Impressionist and 20th-century collection including Monet, Degas, Manet, Gauguin and Picasso. The Old Master rooms upstairs contain Rubens, Rembrandt, Zurbarán and Poussin, and the sculpture court in the former cloister is free to enter. General admission is EUR 8 for adults, with free entry on the first Sunday of each month; temporary exhibitions cost extra (typically EUR 12). Opening hours are 10:00 to 18:00 Wednesday through Monday, closed Tuesdays. Metro Line A stops at Hôtel de Ville - Louis Pradel directly outside.

Pro Tip: The museum is genuinely enormous - budget three hours minimum to see the highlights, or pick two floors and skip the rest. The Impressionist rooms on the first floor and the Egyptian antiquities in the basement are the two most visitor-worthy sections if you're short on time. The convent gardens are a peaceful lunch spot and free to sit in even without a museum ticket.

Opened in 1857 on the east bank of the Rhône, Parc de la Tête d'Or covers 117 hectares and is the largest urban park in France. It contains a 16-hectare boating lake with rental rowboats (EUR 8 for 30 minutes), a free zoo with African plains hosting giraffes, zebras and antelope, and a botanical garden with the largest greenhouse collection in the country - the main glasshouse holds tropical plants under a 21-metre-high iron-and-glass dome dating to 1880. There are also rose gardens with more than 30,000 rose bushes across 570 varieties, a velodrome, and pony rides for children. The park is free to enter and open from around 06:30 to 22:30 in summer, shorter hours in winter. Take Metro Line A to Charpennes-Charles Hernu and walk 10 minutes east, or tram T1 to Condorcet for the main gate.

Pro Tip: The park has seven entrance gates and covering the full grounds on foot takes about two hours. Rent a bicycle from the Vélo'v station at Porte des Enfants du Rhône (the main west entrance) for EUR 1.80 per day; it's the fastest way to reach the zoo and greenhouses without doubling back.

Named after the late Lyonnais chef who held three Michelin stars for 55 straight years, Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse is the covered food market at 102 Cours Lafayette in the 3rd arrondissement. Beyond a plain 1970s concrete exterior, 48 stalls sell the specialities that made Lyon France's unofficial gastronomic capital: rosette sausage from butcher Sibilia, quenelles from Giraudet, Saint-Marcellin cheese aged at Mère Richard's counter, praline tarts from pastry chef Sébastien Bouillet. Several stalls also serve sit-down lunches - oysters and white wine at Merle, cheese platters at Maréchal - typically for EUR 20 to 35 per person. The market opens Tuesday to Saturday from 07:00 to 22:30 and Sunday 07:00 to 13:00, closed Mondays. Metro Line B stops at Place Guichard - Bourse du Travail, a five-minute walk south.

Pro Tip: Cheese and charcuterie stalls close between 12:30 and 15:00 for lunch even though the market itself stays open; go before noon or after 15:30 if you want to shop rather than eat. Sébastien Bouillet's praline tart is the classic sweet buy - roughly EUR 4 a slice and easy to transport, and the pralines are the intensely pink sugared almonds that define Lyon patisserie.

At the southern tip of the Presqu'île where the Saône meets the Rhône, the Confluence district is a redeveloped former industrial docklands turned architectural showcase. Since 2010 the area has been rebuilt around a marina, waterfront promenades, and a collection of aggressively modern buildings including the orange "Cube" by MVRDV, the green "Euronews Cube" by Jakob + MacFarlane, and the district's landmark: the Musée des Confluences, a deconstructed steel-and-glass cloud designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au and opened in 2014. The museum takes a cross-disciplinary approach to natural history, anthropology, and science, with a permanent collection of dinosaur skeletons, ethnographic objects and meteorites; adult entry is EUR 9, free for under-18s and on the first Sunday of the month. Tram T1 runs the length of the peninsula to the Musée des Confluences terminus in about 15 minutes from Bellecour.

Pro Tip: The museum's roof terrace is free to access even without a ticket and gives 360-degree views over the two rivers converging below - one of the best free viewpoints in Lyon. Confluence is also the city's main shopping mall zone, so weekday mornings are quieter than weekends when locals flood in.

The Croix-Rousse hill rises steeply north of Place des Terreaux and was Lyon's silk-weaving heartland during the 19th century, when 30,000 canut looms operated in the tall-ceilinged apartments still standing today. The wide windows and 4-metre-high floors were built specifically to house Jacquard looms; you can visit a working restoration at the Maison des Canuts on Rue d'Ivry, EUR 7 for a guided demonstration. Halfway up the slope, the Amphithéâtre des Trois Gaules is a 19-BCE Roman amphitheatre built as the meeting place for delegates from the three Gallic provinces, now a small free park where you can wander among the surviving arena walls. The district's daily open-air market runs along Boulevard de la Croix-Rousse every morning except Monday and is one of the liveliest in the city. Metro Line C connects Hôtel de Ville up through Croix-Rousse and Hénon stations.

Pro Tip: Croix-Rousse has its own network of traboules used historically by silk workers to carry finished bolts of fabric down to Presqu'île merchants without damaging them in the rain. The Cour des Voraces at 9 Place Colbert has the most photogenic staircase in the district, six storeys of exposed stone steps in an open courtyard, and unlike some traboules it's free to enter and open all day.

Lyon has more than 150 painted murals across the city, a public art tradition dating from the 1980s. Two are worth seeking out. Le Mur des Canuts, at the corner of Boulevard des Canuts and Rue Denfert-Rochereau in Croix-Rousse, is Europe's largest trompe-l'oeil fresco at 1,200 square metres, painted in 1987 and updated every ten years to age the depicted residents and add contemporary details; the current version shows a bustling Croix-Rousse street scene complete with steps, shops and passers-by, all painted onto a flat wall. Down on Presqu'île at 2 Rue de la Martinière, the Fresque des Lyonnais covers a six-storey building with life-sized portraits of 30 famous Lyon-born figures including the Lumière brothers (inventors of cinema), chef Paul Bocuse, writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Emperor Claudius. Both are free to view outdoors at any hour. Metro Line C to Croix-Rousse station reaches Le Mur des Canuts in a five-minute walk; the Fresque des Lyonnais is near Hôtel de Ville station.

Pro Tip: Both frescoes photograph best from directly across the street with a wide lens - the trompe-l'oeil effect flattens if you shoot at an angle. Late afternoon light hits Le Mur des Canuts from the west and brings out the illusion of depth in the painted staircase; morning is better for the Fresque des Lyonnais, which faces south.