Lyon

Two rivers run through the city, and between them the secret passages begin. Lyon, where the Rhône meets the Saône in eastern France, hides its traboules — covered passageways threading through private courtyards and Renaissance stairwells — behind unmarked doors, and the smell of a bouchon kitchen drifts from a side street: butter, wine and something slow-braising in a cast-iron pot. It is a place that takes its lunch as seriously as its history.

Lyon sits where the Rhône meets the Saône, the position that made it Lugdunum, the capital of Roman Gaul, and two millennia of the city are listed by UNESCO — from the Roman theatres on the hill of Fourvière through the Renaissance courtyards of Vieux Lyon to the contemporary architecture of the Confluence. The traboules were the silk workers' shortcuts, passages through the buildings that let them carry cloth between workshops out of the rain, and you can walk them today into courtyards nobody sees from the street. The food is the other inheritance: the bouchons, the traditional bistros that owe their fame to the Mères Lyonnaises and to Paul Bocuse, serve pike quenelles, andouillette and tablier de sapeur, and the covered market that carries Bocuse's name sells the saucisson, the pink-praline tart and the Coussins de Lyon chocolates to take home. Around 8 December the Fête des Lumières turns the whole city into a night-time gallery of light.