Gallia Lugdunensis

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The Roman Empire ca. 120 AD, with the province of Gallia Lugdunensis highlighted

Gallia Lugdunensis was a province of the Roman Empire in what is now the modern country of France, part of the Celtic nation of Gaul.

It is named after its capital Lugdunum (today's Lyon), possibly Roman Europe's major city west of Italy, and a major imperial mint. Outside Lugdunnum was the Condate Altar, where representatives of the Three Gauls met to celebrate the cult of Rome and Augustus. Its original extent was from the rivers Seine and Marne in the north-east, which formed the boundary with Gallia Belgica, to the river Garonne in the south-west, which formed the border with Gallia Aquitania.

Under Augustus, Gallia Lugdunensis was reduced in size - the portion between the river Loire and the Garonne was given to Gallia Aquitania, and central-eastern portions were given to the new province of Germania Superior. The map shows the extent after these reductions.

It was an imperial province, deemed important enough to be governed by an imperial legate.

Since Diocletian's Tetrarchy (296), it was the major province of a diocese confusingly called Galliae ('the Gaul [province]s'), to which further only the Helvetic, Belgian (both also Celtic) and German provinces belonged; with the dioceses of Viennensis (the southernmore provinces of Gaul), Britanniae (also celtic) and Hispaniae (the whole Celtiberic peninsula) this formed the pretorian prefecture also called Galliae, subordinate to the western emperor.

-- The fictional unconquered village from the French comic book Asterix the Gaul is located here, on an Aremorican peninsula (modern Bretagne), because in French popular culture the Gauls are often supposed to have been confined solely to Brittany and Britain.

See also: Gaul

Roman Imperial Provinces (120)