Lyon

Why go

The bouchon tradition — small workers' restaurants that codified a whole region's cooking. Two rivers and two hills — a Roman city, a Renaissance quarter and a silk district stacked on the slopes. The traboules — covered passages cut through buildings, built for silk workers and used by the Resistance. A larder within an hour — Beaujolais, Bresse chickens, Charolais beef, Alpine cheese and Rhône wine.

The character

Lyon sits at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône, which made it Roman Gaul's capital, then Europe's banking and silk centre in the Renaissance. Silk is the key to the city's physical form: the canuts, the weavers who worked upright looms too tall for ordinary rooms, occupied the Croix-Rousse hill in buildings with four-metre ceilings, and the traboules were cut through blocks so that finished cloth could cross town without getting wet.

The food follows the same logic of practicality. Bouchons fed silk workers on what butchers could not sell — tripe, pig's trotters, brains, blood sausage — and the mères lyonnaises, women who had cooked in bourgeois houses and opened their own places between the wars, turned that into a cuisine with rules. Paul Bocuse learned in one such kitchen and then spent fifty years making Lyon the reference point of French cooking. What visitors find today is a city that treats lunch as a serious institution and considers its own gastronomy a civic fact rather than a marketing claim.

Places of character

A bouchon at lunch — paper tablecloths, a set menu, a pot of Beaujolais measured in a 46cl bottle with a thick base. Les Halles Paul Bocuse — the covered market where the city's chefs shop; oysters and a glass of white at the counter at eleven. The Croix-Rousse traboules — enter at 6 rue des Capucins or the Cour des Voraces and cross the hill through the buildings. Fourvière and the Roman theatres — the hill above, with two amphitheatres still used for the summer festival. Musée des Confluences — a deconstructivist crystal at the tip of the peninsula, and the best science museum in France. The Mur des Canuts — a 1,200-square-metre painted wall depicting the neighbourhood, repainted as the district changes.

The way to do it

Lunch is the main event; book a bouchon and go slowly. Walk between the hills over taking taxis — the geography is the argument. Buy at Les Halles even if you are not cooking. And read the traboule etiquette: they are private buildings opened by agreement, so enter quietly and close doors behind you.

One perfect day

Coffee at a counter in Vieux Lyon, then the funicular to Fourvière for the Roman theatres and the view down the confluence. Walk down through the Renaissance courtyards, cross the Saône, and spend an hour at Les Halles buying cheese you will not eat until later. Lunch at a bouchon: quenelle de brochet, andouillette if you are brave, tarte aux pralines, and no plan for the next two hours. Cross to the Croix-Rousse in the afternoon and descend through the traboules to the Mur des Canuts. Aperitif on the Rhône banks where the city walks, then dinner at a neo-bistrot in the seventh arrondissement, where the young cooking is happening.

Grand hotels

Villa Florentine — a seventeenth-century convent on the Fourvière hill with the city laid out below the terrace. Cour des Loges — four Renaissance houses in Vieux Lyon joined around a glazed courtyard; the definitive way to sleep inside the old city.

When to go

Best expression: early December for the Fête des Lumières, when the whole city is lit for four nights. Consider: September and October, Beaujolais harvest and the best market produce of the year. Avoid if possible: August, when a good share of the bouchons close for the month.

The frame

Ideal stay 2 nights · Minimum 1 night · Best arrival TGV from Paris, 2 hours · Airport LYS, 25 km with a tram link · Walkability excellent, with two funiculars · Best without a car yes