City
Lugduno caput Galliarum usque hic legas
Lyon
Listen to the story
Lugdunum, modern Lyon, carries a label that reads like a note to the traveller: capital of the Gauls, and up to here, leagues. The league was the Gallic unit of distance, and the remark marks where the reckoning changed between it and Roman miles. The Roman historian Ammianus says the same: from here roads were measured not in miles but in leagues. The label sits notably far above the city's symbol. Founded as a Roman colony in 43 BC, the city was the birthplace of the emperor Claudius, and where the Saône meets the Rhône some sixty Gallic communities gathered every first of August at the altar of Rome and Augustus.
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