Lyon in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Lyon covers 25 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Lyon rewards a detour.

Day 1

Morning

1. Vieux-Lyon: France's largest Renaissance old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with pink and yellow facades and 300 traboules, hidden covered passageways through its buildings.
2. Fourvière Basilica: Lyon's hilltop Neo-Byzantine basilica, built in thanksgiving after 1870, its gold mosaics and sweeping panorama over the city earning it the nickname 'the hill that prays'.
3. Roman Theatre of Fourvière: A 2,000-year-old Roman theatre carved into the Fourvière hillside, hosting the famous summer Nuits de Fourvière festival beneath the city's two-thousand-year-old stones.
4. Les Halles de Lyon – Paul Bocuse: The covered food market named after Paul Bocuse, Lyon's legendary chef, where 60 vendors offer the finest Lyonnaise charcuterie, cheese, quenelles, and pastries under one roof.
5. Place Bellecour: The largest pedestrian square in Europe, with a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV at its centre, connecting the two rivers and serving as Lyon's main gathering point.
6. Musée des Beaux-Arts: Housed in a grand former Benedictine convent, Lyon's Fine Arts Museum holds the finest collection outside Paris, Rubens, Rembrandt, Rodin, and exceptional Egyptian antiquities.
7. Fête des Lumières (Festival of Lights): Every December 8th, Lyon becomes the world's most spectacular light show, with the entire city transformed by hundreds of light installations attracting 2 million visitors over 4 nights.

Afternoon

1. Croix-Rousse: The 'hill that works', Lyon's silk-weavers' quarter, whose canuts' traboules and revolts of 1831 shaped European labour history, now a bohemian hilltop neighbourhood.
2. Musée des Confluences: A spectacular deconstructivist building at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône, housing an extraordinary science and anthropology museum exploring the origins and futures of humanity.
3. Institut Lumière: Birthplace of Cinema: The villa where Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematographe and screened the world's first films in 1895, now a museum and film archive dedicated to cinema history.
4. Parc de la Tête d'Or: Lyon's magnificent 105-hectare city park with a rose garden of 15,000 roses, a free zoo, a lake for boating, and botanical gardens, the most beautiful park in France.
5. Bouchon Lyonnais: Lyon's traditional bistro, the bouchon, where quenelles, andouillette, tablier de sapeur, and gras double are served with checked tablecloths and Côtes du Rhône in a uniquely convivial atmosphere.
6. Musée Gallo-Romain: Embedded in the Fourvière hillside, this remarkable museum presents Lyon's Roman past with famous bronze tablets of Emperor Claudius and a stunning Bacchic mosaic.

Day 2

Morning

1. Musée des Tissus (Silk Museum): The world's finest textile collection, housed in an 18th-century palace in the Presqu'île, tracing 4,500 years of fabric production from ancient Egypt through Lyon's silk glory to contemporary fashion.
2. Traboules of Lyon: Lyon's unique covered passageways threading through the interiors of buildings, used by silk workers to transport fabric, by Resistance fighters to evade the Gestapo, and today a must-see curiosity of Vieux-Lyon.
3. Ainay Abbey (Basilique Saint-Martin d'Ainay): Lyon's oldest surviving church, a Romanesque basilica of remarkable purity in the Presqu'île, built around 1107, incorporating Roman columns from Lugdunum in its nave, a rare and beautiful gem.
4. Quais de Saône: The Saône riverside quays in Vieux-Lyon, a beloved evening promenade flanked by Renaissance facades and guinguettes (riverside bars), offering some of Lyon's most atmospheric views.
5. Bocuse d'Or (Culinary Olympics): The world's most prestigious culinary competition, held biennially in Lyon in January, where national teams compete under intense pressure before thousands of screaming fans, the Olympics of cooking.
6. Beaujolais & Lyon's Wine Culture: Lyon is surrounded by wine regions, Beaujolais to the north, Côtes du Rhône to the south, and its unique drinking culture of the pot lyonnais (quarter-litre carafe) makes it one of the great wine cities of France.

Afternoon

1. Presqu'île: Lyon's central peninsula between the Saône and Rhône rivers, the commercial, cultural and civic heart of modern Lyon, with luxury shopping, grand squares, and the finest concentration of 18th-19th century Haussmann-style architecture.
2. Roman Lugdunum: Lyon was founded as Lugdunum in 43 BC by Roman general Lucius Munatius Plancus and grew to become the capital of the Three Gauls, the commercial and administrative heart of the western Roman Empire.
3. Canut Revolts of Croix-Rousse: The 1831 and 1834 revolts of Lyon's silk weavers (canuts) were the first major industrial worker uprisings in French history, with the slogan "Live working or die fighting", a turning point in European labour history.
4. Confluence District: Lyon's striking 21st-century urban regeneration project at the tip of the Presqu'île, where the Saône and Rhône meet, bold contemporary architecture, a new mixed-use neighbourhood, and the spectacular Musée des Confluences.
5. Part-Dieu Tower (Le Crayon): Lyon's iconic 1977 skyscraper nicknamed "Le Crayon" (the pencil), standing 165 metres tall in the Part-Dieu business district, it defines the modern Lyon skyline and marks the city's 20th-century ambition.
6. Paul Bocuse & Lyonnaise Cuisine: Lyon is the world's undisputed gastronomic capital, Paul Bocuse, holder of three Michelin stars for 55 years, and the city's extraordinary culinary tradition of quenelles, andouillette, and the celebrated bouchon restaurants.

Full Lyon guide and all stops → · Other itineraries: 3 days