The chief edubtional establishments are the college, or university, founded a fine modern building and attended by over 3,000 students in the different faculties; the Mar tiniere, a great school of science and the indus trial arts with 500 students; a free Catholic university; various institutions of a special character, such as schools of chemistry and chemical industry, schools of design, of com merce, of weaving; a celebrated veterinary school, the botanic garden, etc. Charitable es tablishments are large and numerous. The most important are the HOtel-Dieu, the Maison de la Charite, the Mont de Pike, occupying the Manicanterie or deanery attached to the cathe dral; and the Hospice de l'Antiquaille, on the site of the ancient Roman palace or prietorium now used partly as a lunatic and partly as a Magdalen asylum, and general penitentiary. There are several prisons — the New Prison, an extensive building, well arranged; the Maison des Recluses, now employed as a mili tary prison; and the prison of Roanne, regarded as a model of its kind.
As a manufacturing town Lyons early ac quired and has long maintained a first place. It is a great financial centre, with very large foreign investments. One of its great insti tutions, the Credit Lyonnais, has branches in 100 cities of France. It is the most important centre of silk manufacture in the world, employ ing directly and indirectly over 200,000 persons. j Other manufactures are hats, boots, jewelry and liqueurs; besides dye-works, foundries, glass-houses, potteries, tam:tries, breweries, chemical works and printeries. Lyons, albeit the climate is foggy and rainy, is admirably situated for trade, on two navigable rivers, which make it a great entrepot both for the north and the south. It forms the common centre where the highways and railroads from Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, from Switzerland and Italy, all meet ; it communicates with the Rhine by the Rhone and Rhine Canal, while several other canals, branching off from its rivers, give it ample means of transport over a great part of the interior of the country. The chief imports are raw silk, wine, brandy, oil, soap, flax, hemp, rice, salt, cotton, wool, coffee, dyes, earthenware and timber ; and the exports, spun-silk and silk-goods ribbons, hats, straw bonnets, woolens, flannels, linens, corn, flour, chestnuts, liqueurs, paper, hemp, ironware, etc.
The United States is represented by a consulate.
As Lugdunum, Lyons was an early Gallic town, and when Cesar invaded Gaul was a place of some importance; it figures more or less in the subsequent history of the Roman Empire, several emperors in succession making it their occasional residence and vying with each other in adorning it. It early received Christianity, and toward the end of the 2d cen tury numbered thousands of Christians, among its inhabitants. Its first bishop, Pothinus, died a martyr in 197, and his successor, Irenmus, died also a martyr in 202. Lyons was afterward sacked by the Huns and Visigoths, who destroyed many of its noblest Roman structures. In the 8th century it fell for a time into the hands of an army of Saracens from Spain, and suffered severely; but recovered its pros perity under Charlemagne, on the dissolution of whose empire it became the capital of the king dom of Provence. Subsequently it fell under ecclesiastical domination, and was long gov erned by a succession of archbishops. Two Ecumenical Church Councils were held in the city (1245-74). In 1312 Lyons was annexed to the crown of France. It received its first munic ipal charter in 1320. It owes its new quays and several of its finest edifices to Louis XIV, of whom there is a fine equestrian statue. The Revolution of 1793 occasioned fearful reverses. The inhabitants, finding their industry paralyzed and their trade destroyed, rebelled against revo lutionary violence, and the convention let loose its forces upon them; wholesale butcheries for many days deluged the town with blood. Since that period questions of an economical, or rather socialist nature, culminated in the san guinary revolts of 1831, 1834, 1849 and 1871. Several important figures in history were natives of Lyons, among them the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius, Claudius and Car acalla, and the celebrated general Germanicus, Saints Irenus and Ambrose, and Meissonier the artist. Pop. about 523,796.