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The Secrets of Lyon

Where Silk, Cinema and Gastronomy Wrote History

Before Paris rose to prominence, before the notion of France itself took shape, there was Lugdunum — capital of Roman Gaul, seat of emperors, crossroads of civilization.

Two rivers converge here: the Rhône and the Saône. Between them, two thousand years of history hide in secret passageways, on hilltops crowned by basilicas, and in the kitchens that earned Lyon the title of gastronomic capital of the world.

Your mission: uncover its secrets, one riddle at a time. Tap each stop to reveal its story, solve the riddle, and discover the hidden truth.

10
Stops
~2h
Journey
10
Riddles

How to Play

  1. Tap a stop to read its story
  2. Solve the riddle — tap your answer
  3. The truth (+ hidden history) is revealed!
  4. Tap the 📍 address to navigate via Google Maps
The Roman Capital
Where Gaul Met Rome

In 43 BC, a Roman general founded Lugdunum on this hilltop. It would become the capital of all Gaul.

🏛️
Roman Theatres of Lugdunum
Roman · 15 BC
📍 6 Rue de l’Antiquaille, 69005 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You stand on the slope of Fourvière hill, looking down into the oldest theatre in France. Emperor Augustus ordered it built around 15 BC — a semicircle of stone carved into the hillside, seating 10,000. Below it, the smaller Odeon held another 3,000 for music and poetry recitals.

For three centuries, this was the heart of Roman Gaul. Emperors Claudius and Caracalla were born in Lugdunum. Sixty roads radiated from this hill to every corner of the empire. When Rome burned, Lyon mourned. When Lyon burned in 65 AD, the emperor Nero sent four million sesterces for rebuilding — proof of how vital this city was.
🧩 Riddle
Two Roman emperors were born in Lugdunum. Claudius was one. Who was the other?
💡 Need a hint?
He extended Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire in 212 AD...
🎉 The Answer
B. Caracalla
Caracalla was born here in 188 AD. His Edict of 212 granted citizenship to every free person in the Roman Empire — one of the most sweeping legal acts in history. The theatre was extended under Hadrian to seat 10,700 spectators.
The Vow
A City’s Promise in Stone

When the Prussian army approached in 1870, Lyon made a desperate vow. The result towers above the city.

⛪
Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière
Neo-Byzantine · 1872–1884
📍 8 Place de Fourvière, 69005 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You gaze up at a church that looks more like a white fortress than a place of worship. In 1870, as Prussian troops advanced toward Lyon during the Franco-Prussian War, the city’s archbishop made a solemn vow: if Lyon were spared, they would build a basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Lyon was spared. Construction began in 1872. Architect Pierre Bossan designed something deliberately overwhelming — Byzantine domes, Romanesque towers, and an interior encrusted with 8,000 square meters of glittering mosaics telling the story of the Virgin. The locals have a nickname for it: the upside-down elephant, for the four squat towers.
🧩 Riddle
What event in 1870 prompted the vow to build this basilica?
💡 Need a hint?
A conflict between France and a Central European power...
🎉 The Answer
B. The Franco-Prussian War
The basilica contains 8,000 square meters of mosaics — more than most Byzantine churches. Locals call it l’éléphant renversé (the upside-down elephant) because of its four heavy towers. It was consecrated in 1896.
The Hidden City
Passageways Only Locals Know

Behind ordinary doors lie 500 secret corridors threading through Lyon’s buildings. Most visitors walk right past them.

🕳️
Traboules of Vieux Lyon
Medieval · 4th–16th Century
📍 54 Rue Saint-Jean, 69005 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You push open an unmarked wooden door on Rue Saint-Jean and step into another world. A vaulted stone corridor leads through a courtyard with a Renaissance spiral staircase, then through another building, and emerges on Rue du Bœuf — an entirely different street.

These are Lyon’s traboules, from the Latin trans-ambulare: to pass through. The first were built in the 4th century, when residents on Fourvière hill needed quick access to the Saône river below. By the Renaissance, over 500 laced through the city. During World War II, the French Resistance used them to evade Nazi patrols — the occupiers never managed to map them all.
🧩 Riddle
The word ‘traboule’ comes from Latin. What does the root trans-ambulare mean?
💡 Need a hint?
Think about what these passages do — they move you from one street to another...
🎉 The Answer
B. To pass through
Lyon has approximately 500 traboules across the city — about 200 in Vieux Lyon, 160 on the Croix-Rousse slopes, and 130 on the Presqu’île. The longest connects 54 Rue Saint-Jean to 27 Rue du Bœuf. During WWII, Resistance fighters used them as escape routes right under the noses of the Gestapo.
The Age of Faith
A Clock That Knows the Stars

Three centuries to build. Inside, a 14th-century astronomical clock still marks time with uncanny precision.

⛪
Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste
Romanesque-Gothic · 1180–1476
📍 Place Saint-Jean, 69005 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You stand before a cathedral that took 300 years to complete. Construction began in 1180 on the ruins of a 6th-century church, blending Romanesque solidity in the apse with soaring Gothic ambition in the nave. Two popes were crowned here: John XXII in 1316 and Clement V in 1305.

But the true marvel hides inside. The astronomical clock, first documented in 1383, stands nine meters tall. It tracks the date, the position of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, and the rising of the stars over Lyon. At noon, 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm, mechanical automata spring to life — an angel turns an hourglass while three others strike bells to sound a hymn.
🧩 Riddle
How tall is the astronomical clock inside the cathedral?
💡 Need a hint?
Roughly the height of a three-story building...
🎉 The Answer
C. 9 meters
The current clock was reconstructed in 1661 by Guillaume Nourrisson after the original was destroyed during the Wars of Religion in 1562. The automata perform their choreography four times daily — at noon, 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm.
The Painted City
Thirty Famous Faces on a Single Wall

Lyon has over 100 trompe-l’œil murals. This one condenses 2,000 years of history into 800 square meters.

🎨
Fresque des Lyonnais
Modern · 1994–1995
📍 49 Quai Saint-Vincent, 69001 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You round the corner of Quai Saint-Vincent and stop. An entire building facade appears to have balconies, windows, and people leaning out — but it’s all paint. This is the Fresque des Lyonnais, an 800-square-meter trompe-l’œil mural painted by the CitéCréation collective in 1995.

Thirty of Lyon’s most famous figures stand arranged across six stories: the Lumière brothers with their cinematograph, the Little Prince creator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry gazing skyward, the chef Paul Bocuse in his whites, Emperor Claudius in a toga. A shortlist of 250 names was whittled to these thirty — and every Lyonnais has an opinion about who was left out.
🧩 Riddle
Which Lyon-born author, famous for a beloved children’s book character, appears on this mural?
💡 Need a hint?
His most famous character is a boy who lives on an asteroid...
🎉 The Answer
C. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon in 1900. His The Little Prince has been translated into over 300 languages — making it the most translated non-religious book in history. He disappeared over the Mediterranean in 1944 during a reconnaissance flight.
Power and Water
The Fountain Bordeaux Couldn’t Afford

The man who built the Statue of Liberty also sculpted the fountain in this square. Bordeaux ordered it first — and then refused to pay.

⚖️
Place des Terreaux
17th Century · 1646
📍 Place des Terreaux, 69001 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You stand in Lyon’s grandest square, flanked by the ornate Hôtel de Ville on one side and the Musée des Beaux-Arts on the other. In the center, a massive lead fountain shows a woman driving a chariot pulled by four rearing horses — an allegory of France commanding the four great rivers.

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted it. Yes, that Bartholdi — the man behind the Statue of Liberty. Bordeaux originally commissioned it for their Place des Quinconces in 1857, but when the final price came in, they balked. Lyon’s mayor snapped it up in 1892 for a bargain. Bordeaux has never quite forgiven them.
🧩 Riddle
The sculptor of this fountain is famous for another, far larger work. What is it?
💡 Need a hint?
A gift from France that stands in New York Harbor...
🎉 The Answer
C. The Statue of Liberty
Bartholdi won the fountain commission in 1857, when he was just 23. It took him over 30 years to complete. The Hôtel de Ville behind it was originally built in 1646–1651 by Simon Maupin, then rebuilt by Jules Hardouin-Mansart after a fire in 1674.
The Workers’ Hill
When Silk Weavers Shook an Empire

In 1831, desperate silk workers seized the city. Their revolt echoed across Europe and changed labor history forever.

🧵
Croix-Rousse — Mur des Canuts
19th Century · Silk Workers
📍 36 Boulevard des Canuts, 69004 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You stand before Europe’s largest painted mural: the Mur des Canuts, 1,200 square meters of trompe-l’œil depicting the everyday life of Croix-Rousse. But the real story is in the buildings behind you.

The canuts — Lyon’s silk weavers — lived and worked here. Notice the tall windows: they needed maximum light for their massive Jacquard looms. By the 1830s, nearly half of Lyon’s working population worked in silk, yet wages were barely enough to survive. In November 1831, they revolted. Under the banner “Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant” — Live working or die fighting — they seized the city for three days. The king sent 20,000 troops to retake it.
🧩 Riddle
What was the famous motto of the revolting silk workers in 1831?
💡 Need a hint?
It expressed a stark choice between two fates...
🎉 The Answer
B. Vivre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant
The Mur des Canuts was first painted in 1987 and has been updated several times, most recently in 2013 — the characters were aged 15 years. At 1,200 square meters, it is the largest trompe-l’œil mural in Europe.
Art and Devotion
From Nuns to Masterpieces

Until 1792, this was a royal abbey. Then the Revolution came, the nuns left, and France’s second-greatest art collection moved in.

🏛️
Musée des Beaux-Arts
17th Century Abbey · Museum since 1801
📍 20 Place des Terreaux, 69001 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You pass through the grand entrance into a building that tells two stories at once. Until the Revolution, this was the Royal Abbey of Saint-Pierre-les-Nonnains — a Benedictine convent where aristocratic women took their vows. When the Revolution dissolved religious orders in 1792, the building stood empty.

In 1801, Napoleon’s Chaptal Decree established fifteen provincial museums across France. Lyon’s opened here in 1803. Today, seventy galleries hold treasures spanning five millennia: Egyptian antiquities, Veronese, Rubens, Monet, Gauguin, Picasso. The cloister garden, scattered with Rodin sculptures, remains one of Lyon’s best-kept secrets.
🧩 Riddle
What was this building before it became a museum?
💡 Need a hint?
A community of women devoted to religious life...
🎉 The Answer
B. A Benedictine abbey
The museum houses over 3,000 paintings and is considered France’s second-finest art museum after the Louvre. The Chaptal Decree of 1801 that established it also created museums in Bordeaux, Marseille, and twelve other cities.
The Invention
Where Moving Pictures Were Born

On March 19, 1895, two brothers pointed a camera at a factory gate. Fifty seconds later, cinema existed.

🎥
Institut Lumière
1895 · Birth of Cinema
📍 25 Rue du Premier Film, 69008 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You stand at the gates where it all began. On March 19, 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière set up their Cinématographe and filmed workers leaving their family’s factory. The result — 50 seconds of people walking through a gate — became the first motion picture in history.

The Lumière family lived in the Art Nouveau villa next door, built between 1899 and 1901. Today it houses the Institut Lumière, a museum and cinema preserving their legacy. In the garden, Le Hangar — the original factory shed where the first film was shot — has been converted into a screening room. The street itself was renamed Rue du Premier Film.
🧩 Riddle
What was the subject of the Lumière brothers’ first-ever film in 1895?
💡 Need a hint?
The camera was pointed at the family business at the end of a work day...
🎉 The Answer
B. Workers leaving a factory
The film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory was just 46 seconds long. The Lumières gave the first paid public screening on December 28, 1895 in Paris. They thought cinema was “an invention without a future.” They were spectacularly wrong.
The Grand Stage
Europe’s Largest Pedestrian Square

Everything in Lyon is measured from this point. It is kilomètre zéro — where all distances begin.

🐴
Place Bellecour
1715 · Place Royale
📍 Place Bellecour, 69002 Lyon
▸
📖 The Story
You walk onto a vast red-earth expanse between the two rivers. Place Bellecour is one of the largest pedestrian squares in Europe — roughly 310 meters long and 200 meters wide. At its center, Louis XIV sits astride his horse, gazing toward the Alps.

But this is the second statue. The first, sculpted by Martin Desjardins and erected in 1713, was melted down during the French Revolution to make cannons. The current bronze, by François-Frédéric Lemot, arrived in 1825. It took 12 days and 24 horses to haul it from Paris. At the statue’s base, two figures represent the city’s twin souls: the Rhône and the Saône.
🧩 Riddle
What happened to the original Louis XIV statue during the French Revolution?
💡 Need a hint?
The revolutionaries needed metal for war...
🎉 The Answer
C. It was melted to make cannons
Place Bellecour is Lyon’s kilomètre zéro — all distances in the city are measured from this point. The allegorical figures of the Rhône and Saône at the statue’s base were sculpted by the Coustou brothers in 1720 and survived the Revolution.

📋 More Must-Dos

Top-rated experiences from locals and travelers

🌳
Parc de la Tête d’Or
France’s largest urban park: 117 hectares, free zoo, botanical garden with 20,000 species, and a lake.
📍 Boulevard des Belges
🧀
Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse
Lyon’s legendary indoor food market. Over 60 vendors: cheese, charcuterie, pralines, oysters.
📍 102 Cours Lafayette
🎭
Musées Gadagne
Two museums in one Renaissance palace: Lyon’s city history + world’s puppet museum.
📍 1 Place du Petit Collège
🌉
Confluence District
Where the Rhône and Saône merge. Ultra-modern architecture, Musée des Confluences, waterfront promenades.
📍 86 Quai Perrache
🎨
Street Art in the 7th
Lyon has over 100 monumental murals. Explore the Guillotière and Gerland neighborhoods for hidden gems.
📍 Quartier Guillotière
🚣
Boat Cruise on the Saône
Evening dinner cruise past illuminated Vieux Lyon. The city reflects on the water like a painting.
📍 Quai des Célestins
🏃
Run the Berges du Rhône
5km of car-free riverbank paths. Skatepark, playgrounds, pétanque courts. The city’s outdoor living room.
📍 Berges du Rhône

"Lyon est une ville qui se mange." — Paul Bocuse

Est. 43 BC — Lugdunum
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