1,206-CITY ATLASSOURCE-BACKED CITY REFERENCE
France
Compare this sourced profile of Lyon, France before planning. Stable fields identify the place; confirm current transport, access and opening details with official sources.
01What the data says — and does not say
This page separates the checked GeoNames row for Lyon—520,774, Europe/Paris, and source coordinates—from live travel claims. Those fields identify and compare the record; they do not prove current transport, accessibility, census totals, or a City Atlas Club visit.
Wikidata's localized description: city of France.
02This city's dataset fingerprint
The source row behind Lyon is GeoNames ID 2996944. Its recorded administrative path is Rhone → Rhone-Alpes → France, and GeoNames classifies the place as a first-order administrative seat. Lyon occurs once as a primary city label in this atlas sample; the numeric ID remains the durable source key if names change. The city row itself was updated 2025-12-09; that date belongs to the source record, not to every transport or visitor detail in the real destination.
Within the fixed 1,206-record atlas, Lyon ranks 1,087 by recorded population. Inside the 4 selected France entries it ranks 3; inside the 125 entries in its broad region it ranks 104. Its 520,774 population value is 0.75 times the 698,995 median for the country cohort and 0.78 times the 664,046 regional median. Lyon is rank 3 among the 4 selected France entries, so a percentage band would overstate this small cohort. Lyon's recorded value is materially below the country-cohort median used here. These comparisons describe this selected dataset only; they are not current census rankings or official urban-area boundaries.
Lyon's three nearest other atlas coordinates are Turin at 234.09 km with 847,287 recorded people; Marseille at 275.917 km with 877,215 recorded people; Zurich at 335.321 km with 415,367 recorded people. The closest-to-farthest distance spread is 101.231 km. Compared with Turin, Lyon's recorded population is 0.61 times as large. Against Lyon, Turin follows Torino → Piedmont → Italy in the source. Its point has lower latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the selected Italy cohort rather than France, uses Europe/Rome instead of Europe/Paris, and carries the same first-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is above Lyon's. Against Lyon, Marseille follows Bouches-du-Rhone → Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur → France in the source. Its point has lower latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the same selected France cohort, uses the shared Europe/Paris identifier, and carries the same first-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is above Lyon's. Against Lyon, Zurich follows Bezirk Zuerich → Zurich → Switzerland in the source. Its point has higher latitude and higher longitude; it belongs to the selected Switzerland cohort rather than France, uses Europe/Zurich instead of Europe/Paris, and carries the same first-order administrative seat class. Its recorded population is below Lyon's. Its nearest-neighbor distance ranks 1,045 of 1,206 from shortest to longest in the same snapshot. Lyon's nearest-coordinate gap belongs to the wider half of atlas distances. This pattern can reveal whether other catalog references are geographically close, but it cannot establish whether a border crossing is possible or practical, or whether rail, road, fare, or journey-time connections exist. Read as one record signature, GeoNames 2996944, the coordinate pair 45.7491 / 4.8479, country rank 3 of 4, and neighbor GeoNames 3165524 at 234.09 km bind Lyon to a reproducible comparison. That combined key distinguishes the row; it is not a recommendation or evidence of a physical connection.
Lyon's reference point is 45.7491° north and 4.8479° east. The IANA identifier Europe/Paris is shared by 4 city rows in this catalog, while the GeoNames class PPLA is shared by 429 rows. Lyon's row carries both second- and first-order administrative labels. Lyon's point falls in the middle-latitude coordinate band used by this atlas's row checks. Lyon's time-zone field defines the narrower catalog cohort; its place class is shared more broadly. GeoNames supplies no elevation for Lyon, so the profile preserves that missing value instead of guessing terrain. Together these fields form a reproducible identity check for this page, not a claim about walkability, climate or accessibility.
03Nearby atlas references
Lyon's closest other entries in this atlas are Turin (234.09 km), Marseille (275.917 km), Zurich (335.321 km).
04Verify before you book
Before visiting Lyon, confirm changing decisions with current first-party sources:
Read how City Atlas Club verifies changing travel facts →05Sources and freshness
GeoNames updated the row 2025-12-09; the atlas checked the dataset 2026-08-04. Available Wikidata fields were verified in the same run.
GeoNames data: CC BY 4.0. Wikidata labels and descriptions: CC0 1.0.