Vieux Lyon or the old city is the main tourist section. A gothic church named Saint Jean anchors a plaza from which lead walking streets full of bars, bouchons, and shops.
Unique to Lyon are enclosed passageways or traboules which connect parallel streets in this narrow winding old part of town. Silk makers (or “canuts”) used the passageways to shelter their product from the weather. You can visit a traboule if you are quiet and respectful, as they function in present day as charming passageways off of which Lyonnaise live. The traboules made excellent hideouts for the French resistance during German occupation in WW2.
