Lyon Travel Guide

Lyon is the city the French save for themselves — the country's undisputed gastronomic capital, where the bouchons serve the kind of unfussy, butter-and-offal cooking that built French cuisine. Eat at one, then walk it off across two rivers: Lyon sits at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, with a UNESCO-listed Renaissance old town, Vieux Lyon, threaded by traboules — secret covered passageways once used by silk merchants and, later, the Resistance.

Above it all, the white basilica of Fourvière crowns the hill with a view across the rooftops to the Alps on a clear day. The former silk-weaving district of Croix-Rousse keeps a creative, bohemian edge, and the whole city feels grand but unhurried. Two hours from Paris by TGV and on the way south to Provence, Lyon is the easiest great French city to underestimate.