Odeon of Lyon

The guide to Lyon's Odeon walks the half-circle of stone built in the late first or early second century, once floored with green porphyry from Greece and marble hauled from Tunisia for an audience that came to listen, not shout. You'll hear how Lugdunum's council of notables gathered here for poetry and music while thousands cheered next door at the main theater, and how the site was later stripped bare as a quarry. Archaeologist Pierre Wuilleumier's dig, running from 1941 to 1946, brought it back into daylight.