Liyon in Franco-Provençal, Lyon in French, is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, 391 km southeast of Paris, 278 km north of Marseille, and 113 km southwest of Geneva, Switzerland.
The City of Lyon is the third-largest city in France. Lyon and 58 suburban municipalities have formed since 2015 the Metropolis of Lyon, a directly elected metropolitan authority now in charge of most urban issues.
Lyon is the prefecture of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and seat of the Departmental Council of Rhône (whose jurisdiction, however, no longer extends over the Metropolis of Lyon since 2015).
The capital of the Gauls during the Roman Empire, Lyon is the seat of an archbishopric whose holder bears the title of Primate of the Gauls.
Lyon became a major economic hub during the Renaissance. The city is recognised for its cuisine and gastronomy, as well as historical and architectural landmarks; as such, the districts of Old Lyon, the Fourvière hill, the Presqu'île and the slopes of the Croix-Rousse are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Lyon was historically an important area for the production and weaving of silk.
yon played a significant role in the history of cinema since Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematograph there. The city is also known for its light festival, the Fête des lumières, which begins every 8 December and lasts for four days, earning Lyon the title of Capital of Lights.
Economically, Lyon is a major centre for banking, chemical, pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The city contains a significant software industry with a particular focus on video games; in recent years it has fostered a growing local start-up sector. The home of renowned universities and higher education schools, Lyon is the second-largest student city in France, with a university population of nearly 200,000 students within the Metropolis of Lyon.
Lyon hosts the international headquarters of Interpol, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, as well as Euronews. According to the Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute.
The name of the city has taken the forms Lugdon, Luon, and since the 13th century, Lyon. The Gallic Lugdun or Lugdunon that was Latinized in Roman as Lugdunum is composed of two words. The first may be the name of the Celtic god Lug (in charge of order and law), or the derived word lugon, meaning crow (the crow being the messenger of Lug), but might also be another word lug, meaning light. The second is dunos (fortress, hill). The name thus may designate the hill of Fourvière, on which the ancient city of Lyon is founded, but could mean hill of the god Lug, hill of the crows or shining hill.
Alternatively Julius Pokorny associates the first part of the word with the Indo-European radical *lūg (dark, black, swamp), the basis of the toponyms Ludza in Latvia, Lusatia in Germany (from Sorbian Łužica), and several places in the Czech Republic named Lužice; it could then also be compared to Luze in Franche-Comté and various hydronyms such as Louge.
Further down, in the current Saint-Vincent district, was the Gallic village of Condate, probably a simple hamlet of sailors or fishermen living on the banks of the Saône. Condate is a Gallic word meaning confluence, from which the Confluence district gets its name.
In Roman times the city was called Caput Galliae, meaning capital of the Gauls. As an homage to this title, the Archbishop of Lyon is still called the Primate of Gaul.
During the revolutionary period, Lyon was renamed Commune-Affranchie (Emancipated Commune) on 12 October 1793 by a decree of the Convention Nationale. It resumed its name in 1794, after the end of the Terror.
Lyon is called Liyon in Franco-Provençal.
The historic site of Lyon was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. In its designation, UNESCO cited the exceptional testimony to the continuity of urban settlement over more than two millennia on a site of great commercial and strategic significance. The specific regions comprising the historic site include the Roman district and Fourvière, the Renaissance district (Vieux Lyon), the silk district (slopes of Croix-Rousse), and the Presqu'île, which features architecture from the 12th century to modern times.
More information: Lugdunum-Musée et Théâtres Romains
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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