The Festival of Lights (Fête des Lumières) in Lyon

Every year at the beginning of December, the city of Lyon is set ablaze in an explosion of colour and light. The streets, squares and facades of the city's most emblematic monuments, as well as its urban parks, play host to artistic installations created by local and international lighting designers, visual artists and video artists. Spotlight on the 2024 programme. 

2024, an anniversary edition

In 2024, the artists selected presented some thirty eclectic works to surprise and dazzle the 2 million visitors.

Among the must-see stops along the way:
 

• To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Festival of Lights, six emblematic works that have marked the history of the event will once again be projected onto the streets of Lyon, including the adorable Inuit-inspired Anooki in the Parc de la Tête d'Or and on Place Bellecour, and Le Petit Géant on Place des Terreaux. 
   
• The city's green lung, the Parc de la Tête d'Or, is also home to other works such as Winter Blossom, Solar Dust and Plastic Island , designed to raise visitors' awareness of the effects of pollution. 
   
• The Parc Serge Blandan, renovated several years ago, is home to aBoum de lumières that should delight families. 
   
• New venues such as the Auditorium de l'orchestre national de Lyon in the Part-Dieu district and the Gros Caillou on the Croix-Rousse hill. 
   
• Disability and environmental protection will be in the spotlight, with the Celestial Brainstorminstallation (Place de la Bourse) dealing with mental disorders, and the Coral ghosts work (Place de la République) depicting coral reefs.
   

And let's not forget the great classics: the torchlight procession on 8 December, starting at the Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste and finishing at the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière. This year, the monument will be hosting a work projected onto its facades, to be discovered during the Festival of Lights and from 26 to 31 December. The Fête des Lumières also features a number of works of art scattered around the city's main squares and monuments, including Place des Terreaux, Place Bellecour, Place des Jacobins, Saint-Jean Cathedral and Parc de la Tête d'Or.

A secular tradition

The Festival of Lights originated in 1643, when the city implored the Virgin Mary to protect it from the plague, promising to honour her with the construction of a statue on the top of Fourvière hill. Two hundred years later, on 8 December 1852, when the inauguration of the statue was compromised by inclement weather, the sky miraculously cleared. To thank the Virgin Mary, the people of Lyon lit up their windows with thousands of candles called lumignons. The Festival of Lights was born.

Coeur de Lyon (Heart of Lyon)

©Muriel Chaulet/Ville de Lyon - Charity operation Les Lumignons du Coeur, organised at Place des Jacobins, Lyon, during the Fête des lumières.

The original tradition of lighting candles on 8 December is also at the heart of the Fête des lumières with the participative project "Les Lumignons du Coeur". The principle is simple: perform an act of solidarity by buying one or more Lumignons du Cœur for 2€. All donations collected are distributed to a designated charity before the festivities. In 2024, the profits will be donated to the Salvation Army Foundation. So go to the Parc de la Tête d'Or rose garden to buy one or more candles.

Highlights of the 2023 Fête des Lumières 

Also read:

Lyon: 8 steps for a night out in the city of lights

Fete des lumieres