Institut Lumière

The Institut Lumière occupies the Villa Lumière, the bourgeois family home of Antoine Lumière in Lyon's Monplaisir district, 8th arrondissement, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It was in this house and its adjacent photographic factory workshop that Auguste and Louis Lumière developed the Cinématographe and conducted the world's first public film screening for a paying audience on 28 December 1895, in Paris — and the earlier private screenings were held in the garden salon of the family home. The museum tells the full story of the Lumière family and the invention of cinema through original equipment, personal documents, and reconstructed laboratory spaces. Highlights include the original Cinématographe camera and projection apparatus, a collection of early Lumière films shown in a small on-site cinema, and the restored family drawing room. The adjacent Hangar du Premier Film, a converted factory building, serves as a 250-seat cinema that regularly screens classic and contemporary films as part of the annual Festival Lumière, held every October. The museum is intimate — ten rooms across the villa — and a focused visit takes 1.5 to 2 hours. The neighbourhood of Monplaisir retains some of the early-20th-century suburban character it had when the Lumières lived there; a short walk reveals the former factory buildings along the Rue du Premier Film.