City Guide: Lyon

The optimists’ guide, written on the hope that England would reach Lyon for a semi-final or the final. The city makes the strongest claim to be France’s gastronomic capital, with some 4,000 restaurants and fifteen Michelin stars; its bouchons serve two or three courses with wine for under twenty euros, and Le Garet and Daniel et Denise are singled out. A centre of the wartime resistance, Lyon still has its traboules, the network of secret merchants’ passages used as hiding places and escape routes. Vieux Lyon is among Europe’s largest Renaissance quarters, with the St Jean Cathedral and its astronomical clock, and the Fourviere Basilica above. Olympique Lyonnais’ 59,000-seat ground, opened in January 2016, replaced the ageing Stade de Gerland and sits half an hour from the centre by tram.