Crossing Lyon by boat: a cinematic journey through the historic centre at public-transport prices

Sailing along the Saône feels like watching a cinematic tracking shot. The image has a local origin: in 1895, Lyon-born Louis Lumière set up his heavy cinematograph on the riverbank to film *Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon*, considered the world’s first news report.

Today, the same setting comes alive aboard Navigône, a modern public transport service in the TCL network. It restored river navigation in 2025, more than a century after Lyon’s historic bateaux-mouches disappeared. The name does not refer to flies, despite the common belief. It comes from La Mouche, an industrial district in southern Lyon where the vessels were originally built.

The boats, including Le Gone, La Fenotte, Le Canut and La Soyeuse, are fully electric and silent. Between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., the journey becomes a cool refuge from the summer heat. Golden-hour light turns the Renaissance façades of Vieux Lyon honey-colored, while people picnic, talk and watch the boats from the riverbanks.

The route passes several photogenic structures. The asymmetrical Passerelle du Palais de Justice is popularly known as La Girafe because of its tall mast and many cables. Farther south, the bright red Passerelle Saint-Georges is called the Pont rouge. Its stone pillars resemble weaving shuttles, a tribute to the canuts, the silk weavers of Saint-Georges and Ainay.

But passing beneath Lyon’s bridges also reveals a darker history. The city, which Charles de Gaulle called the capital of the French Resistance, used its riverside façades and hidden traboules to mislead the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation. As German forces withdrew, they dynamited almost every bridge over the Saône and Rhône to slow the Allied advance.