Population: 470,000 inhabitants
Lyon is a city located in the region of the Rhône-Alpes founded by Romans officially in 43 BC, so there is more than 2.000 years of history. Even being so old Lyon is far from being a decadent place. It is a very dynamic and modern city being a gastronomic reference in France.
Even being the 3rd biggest city in France and the 2nd biggest metropolitan area, it doesn`t feel like a huge city, far from being a crazy metropolis. Actually it feels very cosy and nice place to live with calm streets and filled with many options of restaurants, bars, cinemas, open market.
Like Paris, Lyon is a great touristic destination to explore, but the difference from the capital is that you will visit the main sights with calm and without the endless huge bunch of tourists.
One of these sights is the Notre Dame de Fourviere. Located on the top of the hill reaching it provides a good walk passing by the St. Jean cathedral and the Gaulese theater and when you get there you are rewarded with the beautiful Fourvière basilica and the view of Lyon.
For those who love cinema Lyon is where it all started. The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière worked in their father's photographic firm and there they started to develop moving pictures technique that resulted in the film camera, Cinématographe. The first film called 'Workers leaving the Lumière factory' was played on 1895 for the first time in public in Paris. It was a 46 seconds movie filmed by Louis Lumiere at Lyon showing the workers leaving the factory after a day of work. When it came to public the news that you could see moving pictures and not only still pictures it made everybody curious and willing to go and see it. Now the house of the Lumière brothers is a museum.
For more of the first movies in history: http://www.institut-lumiere.org/francais/films/1seance/accueil.html
At Lyon 2 rivers crosses its center and meets, the Rhône (to the East) and the Saône (to the West).
Relax sitting along the river can be a perfect activity for the end of the day. Admiring the beauty of the bridges or just watching the water, people and vehicles passing by.
Lyon hide treasures like wall paintings made by Cité Création (http://www.cite-creation.com/). They are not only impressive and beautiful paintings on the side of the buildings, but each painting has a history background and references to that period.
The amazing Gratte-Ciel at Villeurbanne (a commune in the Rhône region, at northeast of Lyon), built around 1930, is incredibly futuristic and impressive still nowadays. For the time it was built it was revolutionary. The idea was to offer a modern place to live for poor and middle class people and at the same time modernize the center of Villeurbanne.
Each apartment had separate rooms like kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, what nowadays is very usual back in that time when most of families were used to sleep together in the same room and the toilet being outside of home this concept of separate rooms was shocking. It is one of the most impressive and modern architecture I have ever seen and it is from 1930!!! The lines of the buildings that bring to life a feeling of surrealism and futurism.
