France · Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes · Lyon
Gerland, Lyon — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Gerland is a quarter of Lyon's 7th arrondissement on the Rhône, once a château estate on the rue de Gerland, covering two thirds of the arrondissement.
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Where to stay in Gerland
Where visitors usually base themselves, and why.
The river is the front door. Gerland runs along the Rhône in the south of Lyon, bounded north and east by the railway, and the quarter has been rebuilt so often that the streets read as a series of periods rather than as one place. It used to be called La Mouche.
The name survives on the SNCF depot and the Jewish cemetery, and it came from the streams that crossed the ground, which also made it flood-prone and therefore cheap. Cheap is why the factories came.
Things to do in and around Lyon
Ranked by global recognition; descriptions from Wikidata (CC0).
Churches & Religious Sites
2- Ancienne église Saint-Jean-Marie-Vianney d'Oullins
- église du Pras
Stadiums & Sports
3- bassin de Joutes de La Mulatière
- aire de jeux de La Mulatière
- boulodrome privé Ecm
worth knowingacross 2 categories in and around Lyon
About Gerland
What are the main landmarks in Gerland?
The fort is the oldest thing standing. Built by about 1846 on the site of a disused vitriol works, the fort de la Vitriolerie was left out of Lyon's first ring of defences, kept as barracks when the law of 8 June 1886 downgraded the ring, and renamed quartier Général-Frère in 1968. The riverbank is the other landmark.
The Vitriolerie dyke straightened the Rhône in 1840, and the old channel was filled in between 1862 and 1875, which is the ground the quarter was built on. One name went out on the water. Michel Félizat began building his boats at La Mouche from 1860, and the bateaux-mouches that carry sightseers on rivers elsewhere took their name from the lône he built them on.
What is the history of Gerland?
A château gave the quarter its ground. Its first known owner was Gaspard de Mornieu, a squire at the end of the 16th century, and the estate then ran to 133 hectares, ringed by La Mouche, les Culattes, les Rivières, les Channées, la Vitriolerie, les Cures, la Colombière and Debourg. The Rodet-Chappet heirs broke it up.
Selling the domain in pieces through the 19th century is what let the quarter develop at all, and La Guillotière, the commune Gerland belonged to, was absorbed into Lyon in 1852. Industry chose it for three reasons. There were huge empty plots at the gates of Lyon, the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway ran alongside the Rhône, and land was cheap because the floods kept coming.
The name itself is unsettled. One reading takes it as land of water, from a ger that may be the German Wasser or a Celtic root with the same sense, joined to the land ending, though nothing in the record settles it.
Where is Gerland?
Gerland lies along the left bank of the Rhône in the south of Lyon, closed off north and east by the railway lines, and it takes up two thirds of the 7th arrondissement.
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More areas in Lyon
Updated October 2026