Givors

Givors is a commune in the Metropolis of Lyon, in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region of eastern France, lying about 25 km south of Lyon at the confluence of the Rhone and the Gier. It stands on the main road between Lyon and Saint-Etienne, between the Monts du Lyonnais and the foothills of Mont Pilat, and has long been a crossroads between the communities of the Rhone and those of the Loire. The town grew around river trades: corporations of watermen were prominent from the 17th to the 19th century, a canal for carrying coal opened in 1781, and the Saint-Etienne to Lyon railway, the first in France, ran through the Gier valley. Glass making, metallurgy and pottery made it an industrial town until factories began closing in the 1960s, and its glassworks shut in 2003. It left the department of Rhone to join the Metropolis of Lyon on 1 January 2015 and is now largely a dormitory town for Lyon.