History of Lyon

Lyon was founded as a Roman colony in 43 BC by Munatius Plancus, a lieutenant of Caesar, on the site of a Gaulish hill-fort settlement called Lug[o]dunon-from the Celtic sun god Lugus (’Light’, cognate to Old irish Lugh, Modern irish Lu) and dunon (hill-fort). The name was latinised as Lugdunum; Lug was equated by the Romans to Mercurius. Lug’s ‘totem’ was a cock (rooster), hence the Modern French association with ‘le coq’.

The three parts of Gaul mentioned by Caesar met at Lyon. Agrippa recognized that Lugdunum’s position on the natural highway from northern to south-eastern France made it a natural communications hub, and he made Lyon the starting point of the principal Roman roads throughout Gaul. it then became the capital of Gaul, partly thanks to its fortunate site at the convergence of two navigable rivers, and quickly became the main city of Gaul. Two emperors were born in this city: Claudius and Caracalla.

The Christians in Lyon were persecuted for their religious views under the reigns of the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Septimus Severus. The great Christian bishop of Lyon in the 2nd century was the Easterner irenaeus.

Burgundian refugees from the destruction of Worms by Huns in 437 were resettled by the military commander of the west, Aëtius, at Lugdunum, which was formally the capital of the new Burgundian kingdom by 461.

in 843, by the Treaty of Verdun, Lyon, with the country beyond the Saône, went to Lothair i.

Fernand Braudel remarked, “Historians of Lyon are not sufficiently aware of the bi-polarity between Paris and Lyon, which is a constant structure in French development” from the late Middle Ages to the industrial Revolution (Braudel 1984 p. 327). The fairs in Lyon, the invention of italian merchants, made it the economic countinghouse of France in the late 15th century. When international banking moved to Genoa, then Amsterdam, Lyon simply became the banking center of France; its new Bourse (treasury), built in 1749, still resembled a public bazaar where accounts were settled in the open air. During the Renaissance, the city developed with the silk trade, especially with italy; the italian influence on Lyon’s architecture can still be seen. Thanks to the silk trade, Lyon became an important industrial town during the 19th century.

Lyon was a scene of mass violence against Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres in 1572.

The silk workers of Lyon, known as canuts, staged two major uprisings: in 1831 and 1834. The 1831 uprising saw one of the first recorded uses of the black flag as an emblem of protest.

Lyon was a centre for the occupying German forces and also a stronghold of resistance during World War ii, and the town is now home to a resistance museum. (See also Klaus Barbie.) The traboules, or secret passages, through the houses enabled the local people to escape Gestapo raids.