A trip to see the ruins

My American friend and I decided to go to the The Museum of Gallo-Roman civilization on the day it was open free to the public. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t want to pay the ~4 bucks, its was more that we could just ‘breeze’ in without the hassle of having to purchase a ticket with usually involves speaking French and dealing with the multitude of Euro coins and bills.

Before we went to the museum, we had to get there by going up to the top Fourvière Hill where this museum was located. There is a trolley type car that you can take to go up the hill and that in itself is interesting and fun. We first stopped at the Notre Dame Basicala located at the top of the hill. Beautiful church and rather new in European time.

Then it was on to the museum. Too bad I couldn’t read Latin, because this is a great place to practice! The museum was full of artifacts and architectural pieces found on Fourviere Hill in Lyon. I think I read somewhere that they found this stuff by accident when they were digging to build apartments.

Here is some official history:

“The second town of the Roman Empire after Rome, Lugdunum (the old name of Lyon) was proclaimed the capital of the three Gauls by the Emperor Augustus. The Romans built a theatre, a forum, temples, the shrine which is said to be to Cybèle, baths, aqueducts and comfortable houses. On the slopes of the Croix Rousse the Amphithéâtre des 3 Gaules became the political centre, where every year representatives of 60 tribes from three provinces met.”
-From Yahoo Travel

The museum doesn’t allow pictures so I have none but you can see the museum here.

I wanted to stay longer and see more of the museum – well worth a visit – so I plan to go back at another time.

We walked around the ruins after seeing the exhibits. This is the place (in the amphitheatre) where they have summer concerts and we attended the “Night of Soul” concert that was just awesome. The setting for any concert is great and at that particular concert, the music was awesome too.

The way home was by foot along a very narrow road. I found the buildings to be very old and charming. I shot a few pictures when I wasn’t watching out for the cars.

See photos here.