The Gallo-Roman Museum

In 43 BC, nine years after the end of the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, the Roman town of Lugdunum was founded at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône. For several centuries it was the true “metropolis of the Gauls,” capital of the province, seat of one of the great sanctuaries of the Roman world and a key trading point between the Mediterranean and the North of the Empire. Since the sixteenth century, hundreds of objects, initially just chance finds but later the result of archaeological excavations, have been uncovered in Lyon. For the most part, they have been brought together in the Gallo-Roman Museum, built in 1975 by the architect Bernard Zehrfuss. Across 105 commentated and illustrated objects, this book invites readers to take a thematic journey through the museum's collections. To discover Lyon's distant past, the history of the Roman town, its numerous activities, but also the way of life of its inhabitants, their pastimes and their beliefs.