• Opportunity to engage in Lyon’s remarkable ancient & renaissance heritage

• Visits to two principle museums including Lyon’s fine art gallery  

• An accent on Lyon’s renowned gastronomy

• A day spent in Beaujolais visiting two private seventeenth century chateaux

• Visit to Vienne & its superb Roman buildings  

• Comfortable accommodation at the 5* Cour des Loges in Vieux Lyon, the city’s most central & characteristic district

In 43BC, nine years after Caesar’s conquest of Gaul and a year after his assassination, Lugdunum was founded on a hill overlooking the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers. As the unofficial ‘Capital of the Gauls’, the colony lay at the centre of a road, river and trading network connecting all three Gaul provinces. Furthermore, Lugdunum’s strategic location made it an ideal place to launch attacks on Germania. The coming to power of Emperor Claudius, born in Roman Lyon in 10BC, further developed the Gaulish settlement as it grew beyond the banks of both rivers.   

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century, Lyon survived as an important urban centre becoming absorbed into the Burgundian Kingdom, later into the Holy Roman Empire and finally into the Kingdom of France in 1312 under Philip the Fair. Though many monastic communities had taken root around Lyon in the early medieval period, religious minorities, money lenders (from Lombardy) and traders flourished throughout these political changes to the city by its feudal masters and the church. At the dawn of the Renaissance, Lyon’s annual trade fairs drew in merchants and traders from across Europe and especially Italy. Lyon also became a major centre for book publishing and after King Francois I of Valois issued weaving privileges in 1534 ending monopolies in Italy, the royal silk manufacture was established, a major part of Lyon’s industrial and cultural identity the city still carries today. The religious wars of the sixteenth century, civil war in the seventeenth followed by revolution in the eighteenth have made for a hardy and proud people, accented by the activities of the Resistance before and during World War II.         

Our short tour is an opportunity to engage in one of France’s most sophisticated cities with a strong cultural identity rooted in its Roman and recent history, trade, the silk industry and of course not forgetting its reputation as perhaps the gastronomic pulse of France. We shall spend a day in Beaujolais for a little wine-tasting with visits to two of the most important private châteaux around Lyon. We shall also visit Vienne, a smaller Rhône-facing town with superb Roman buildings and a sense of place common to much of what we shall see both in Lyon and its idyllic surrounds.  

We shall stay in the heart of ‘Vieux Lyon’, or ‘Old Lyon’, close to the banks of the River Saône. The 5* Cour des Loges dates from the fourteenth century and maintains its original courtyard and architectural form. Its facilities include a Michelin-starred restaurant, where we shall dine on our first evening, a bistrot, bar, spa and indoor swimming pool. All that we wish to see including river walks, shops, restaurants and bars are within comfortable walking distance.

Day 1: Tuesday 8 June – We fly from Heathrow arriving at Lyon in the late afternoon. We then transfer the short distance to the city to check-in to our hotel for four nights, the 5* Cour des Logis. Later in the evening we shall dine in our hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant, the Les Loges - wine, water and coffee are included in all dinners and lunches. 

Day 2: Wednesday 9 June – We spend our first day on foot in two distinct yet adjacent areas of Lyon.We meet our local guide Jérôme Fayet-Trévy and take the funicular the very short distance up to Fourvière, the hill which dominates the city. Built over Trajan’s Forum is the striking Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière which we shall visit. Raised through private donations and erected from 1872, its architect Pierre Brossan clearly found inspiration in the complex and gilded Byzantine-Norman churches and chapels of the Hautevilles he studied in Palermo. We pause for coffee and visit the Lyon Gallo-Roman Museum dedicated to the city’s origins and Roman life in Gaul. This well organised collection displays some quite remarkable antiquities, especially in bronze and mosaic. We shall take in the views, Lyon’s Roman Theatre and return via the funicular to Vieux Lyon where we shall pause for lunch, which today is not included. In the afternoon, we explore ‘Old Lyon’, a small grid plan located on the River Saône woven together by the renowned traboules – hidden, covered passageways connecting the renaissance-era buildings and streets, one or two of which we shall investigate! We also visit the Cathedral of St Jean, a muscular twelfth century church marrying Romanesque and Gothic styles seamlessly. Our hotel is a short distance away after which the evening will be free. 

Day 3: Thursday 10 June – Today we drive the short distance northwards to spend the day in the wine region of Beaujolais, internationally renowned for its low tannin wines produced from thin skinned Gamay grapes. Amidst its vine-blanketed hills is the Château de la Chaize near the village of Odenas. Family-run since 1676 by the Gruy family, the formal gardens of the estate were designed by André Le Nôtre, head gardener to Louis XIV. The chateau was designed by the architect of Versailles, Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Our visit includes a private visit to the gardens and a special private wine-tasting within the chateau. We pause for a group lunch nearby at the village of Cercié. We return to Lyon via the village of Fareins close to the River Saône to visit our second private property, the Château de Fléchères. The château’s history is tied to the internecine wars of religion when the Calvinist royal treasurer Jean Sève played a role in the uprising which led to Lyon returning to the authority of the then Protestant King Henry IV in 1594. The château was built soon afterwards and frescoed in a lively Baroque manner by an unknown Tuscan artist of the early seventeenth century. We shall visit some of the interiors via a private, guided visit. The evening will be free.      

Day 4: Friday 11 June – Our half day of activities focuses on the Presqu’île area of Lyon, essentially the ‘peninsula’ located between the rivers Saône and Rhône. We shall take in a variety of buildings including the gothic Church of San Nizier and the town hall of Lyon, the Hôtel de Ville, where we plan to visit privately the splendid baroque reception rooms. After a pause for coffee, our principal visit of the morning is just opposite at the Lyon Museum of Fine Arts, a collection of international standing and one of France’s leading galleries outside of Paris. Its holdings display a wide range of periods and genres beginning with antiquities from the Egyptian and Greco-Roman world. We shall focus our attentions on the collections of non-French Old Masters and French works from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries including works by Poussin, Rubens, Corot, Degas and Monet. We end our explorations at lunch (not included) after which you will be free to explore Lyon at leisure for the remainder of the afternoon. We meet later in the evening to walk the short distance across the River Saône to one of Lyon’s best restaurants.     

Day 5: Saturday 12 June – On our final day, we depart Lyon and travel the short distance southwards along the Rhône to the small riverside town of Vienne. Like Lyon, Vienne became an important Roman colony under Julius Caesar reflected in the quality of the early imperial Roman buildings in this pretty town. After a coffee break on arrival, our morning visit takes in the highly impressive Temple of Augustus & Livia as well as the prominent Roman Theatre. We shall also pop into the gothic Cathedral of St Maurice. Our final festive group lunch takes place in the town, and after a little free time to mooch around this pretty place, we travel the short distance to Lyon’s St Exupery Airport and our early evening return flight to London Heathrow’s Terminal 5.  

PRACTICALITIES

Price £2590 (per person/2 sharing) Without Flights £2390pp Deposit £400pp

Single Supplement £395 (Superior Double for Sole Use)

Hotel 4 nights with breakfast 5*Hotel Cour des Logis in a Double Premium Room (2 sharing)

Flights British Airways

BA360 Depart London Heathrow Terminal 5 1510 arrive Lyon St Exupery 1800

BA363 Depart Lyon St Exupery 1915 arrive London Heathrow Terminal 5 1955

Price includes 2 dinners & 2 lunches with water, wine & coffee, all local transfers, entry fees & gratuities, services of James Hill and our local guide in Lyon on day.2.

Not included Travel to/from Heathrow, 2 dinners & 2 lunches

Please note our tours generally involve a significant amount of standing and walking, sometimes across uneven ground, or over cobbled streets, or up and down steps and inclines. We do not have an upper age limit for participants, but we require you to have a level of fitness which does not affect other participants' enjoyment of the tour. Please also note that many palaces, gardens, villas, museums and galleries have limited seating and perhaps do not have lifts. You should be able to walk at a reasonable pace and/or stand for at least twenty minutes without aid or requiring a rest. If you are in any doubt, please do contact us for advice on the tour’s suitability for you.