Lyons

Lyon is situated on one of Europe's major north-south routes in central France at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers, where the Rhone river has carved a valley through the Massif Central to drain into the Mediterranean. Third city of France with a metro area population of 1.2m Lyon goes back to Roman times as an important center. It formed the Romans' gateway to northern France, the low countries and Germany. It was a center of Christianity from 200AD, saw the establishment of the first stock exchange in France and became a famous trading center in medieval times, is famous for manufacturing advances in textiles, has a huge concentration of famous universities and was a hotbed of resistance to the Nazis to during World War 2. To the west of Lyon are the mountains of the Massif Central and to the east the Alps, Geneva the capital of Switzerland being only 100km distant.