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The Lumière brothers and the birth of cinema

Cinema was born in Lyon: Louis Lumière patented the cinematograph there in 1895 and the first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, was shot there. The first paying public screening took place in Paris on 28 December 1895.

A family of industrialists

Antoine Lumière, a photographer from Besançon, opened a studio on rue de la Barre in 1870. His sons Auguste (1862) and Louis (1864), trained at La Martinière school, developed an instant photographic plate in 1881, the Étiquette bleue, which made the family's fortune. The factories were built in Monplaisir.

Major inventions

The cinematograph was patented in 1895. The autochrome, the first commercial colour photography process on glass plates, was patented in 1903 and sold from 1907.

The factories and the first screening

The success of the Étiquette bleue launched industrial production in Monplaisir, making photographic paper and plates; autochrome output reached 6,000 plates a day in 1913. The first paying public screening took place in Paris on 28 December 1895, in the Indian Salon of the Grand Café, before thirty-three spectators. Its success was such that the police had to manage the queues.

The invention of the cinema hall

The Lumières did not just film: they imagined collective projection, in the dark, on a big screen, with a paid ticket. Lyon's first cinema opened on rue de la République in January 1896.

What to see today

The Institut Lumière and its museum occupy the family villa in Monplaisir. The Festival Lumière takes place each autumn. The Mur des Cinéastes (film-makers' wall) on cours Gambetta recalls film history and films shot in Lyon, such as Bertrand Tavernier's L'Horloger de Saint-Paul.

Updated 25 October 2026.