Lugdunum

Lugdunum was a major Roman city founded in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers, on the site of present-day Lyon, France. Within about fifty years it had become the administrative center of Roman Gaul and Germany, linked by major roads to Italy, Germany and the Atlantic coast, and its population is estimated to have reached 50,000 to 200,000 people between AD 69 and 192. Two Roman emperors, Claudius and Caracalla, were born there. The city's name gradually shifted through medieval sound change into the modern Lyon.