Institut Lumière and Musée Lumière

The Institut Lumière and Musée Lumière occupy the Villa Lumière at 25 Rue du Premier-Film in Lyon's 8th arrondissement, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France. The house was built in 1899 by Antoine Lumière, father of Auguste and Louis Lumière, the brothers who developed the Cinématographe, a combined camera and projector, in Lyon in 1895. Their factory for photographic plates stood next to the villa in what is now the Monplaisir district. On 19 March 1895 the brothers filmed workers leaving the factory, the footage known as La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon, and the first public paying screening took place in Paris on 28 December 1895. The villa, an Art Nouveau house with a glass conservatory and decorated interiors, was restored and opened as a museum in 1982, and the Institut Lumière was founded in 1982 to preserve early film heritage; it now runs the Lumière Festival each October and a cinema in the former factory hangar. The museum displays the original Cinématographe and Kinetoscope-era devices, autochrome colour photographs, the brothers' equipment and their films, which can be watched in the rooms. The staircase, ceilings and salons of the villa show the household of a wealthy industrial family. The garden contains the hangar where the first film was shot, and a statue marks the site. The Lumière brothers also developed the Autochrome, an early colour photography process patented in 1903. A film library and a cinema programme screen restored classics. The institute is close to the Monplaisir-Lumière metro station on line D, making it an easy visit from the centre of Lyon. Admission prices vary by source, so visitors should confirm the current rate at the ticket desk.