Vienne

Vienne in the Isère Department¹ of France is located on the left (east) bank of the Rhône River, south of Lyon. As of 2010 it had 29 thousand residents.² The tallest buildings are the Résidence Bellevue and the Tour (Tower) Lorraine (both 16 stories).⁴ Prior to the Roman conquest, Vienne was the capital of the Allobroges⁵ tribe of Celts, who dwelt in the area south of Lake Léman/ Genève, and along the left bank of the Rhône from Genève, and through Haute-Savoie, Savoie, Isère and Rhône departments, and perhaps northern Drôme Department. The Roman conquerors called it Vienna.

External references

Roman pyramid, Vienne, Isere

Historical maps

Footnotes

1. Rhône-Alpes Region.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communes_in_France_with_over_20,000_inhabitants, accessed 2/5/2015.
3. Tables of the World's Largest Cities, in Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987). In 200 BCE it was smaller than Amasia, which was smaller than Madurai, which was smaller than دمشق (Dimashq or Damascus), which was smaller than both Srinagar and Kaifeng, which were smaller than Trichinopoly, which was smaller than Messina, which had 35 thousand residents; it was larger than Όλβία Ποντική (Ólbía Pontiké), which had 30 thousand residents. In both 200 BCE and 361 CE it was the largest city in what is now France.
4. Emporis.com, accessed 3/3/2015.
5. I do not know what the Allobroges called themselves, nor what they called their capital at Vienne.