The guide
The practical park
Lyon's other locations all have something against them: the slopes are steep, the quays are windy, the old town is narrow and busy. The Tête d'Or has none of those problems, and that is most of its value.
A hundred hectares, level throughout, with gates on four sides and parking near most of them. It is the location we propose when a session includes a pushchair, a grandparent, a recent injury or a heavily pregnant person — which is a large share of all family bookings.
What is actually in it
The lake is the largest feature and the least interesting photographically: open water with a road behind it. It works in the early morning when there is mist on it.
The avenues are the real subject. Tall, dense, and deeply shaded, they give you a corridor of soft light in the middle of a July afternoon when everywhere else in Lyon is unusable.
The rose garden is spectacular for about six weeks and ordinary for the other forty-six. That is worth planning around rather than hoping for.
The botanical glasshouses are a wet-weather fallback and photograph well, though they are warm, humid and busy at weekends.
Season and hours
Summer is when this park earns its place, because it offers shade at hours when no other Lyon location does.
October is the best-looking month. Winter is quiet and often beautiful with mist on the lake, but the gates close early — considerably earlier than people expect — and a session planned for late afternoon in December can find itself walking out.
What it suits
Family sessions above everything, and by a wide margin. Maternity sessions, for the same reasons of level ground and somewhere to sit. And couples who want green rather than stone.
For a session that wants Lyon to look like Lyon, the Saône quays or the slopes do that better; this park could be in any large European city, which is occasionally the point. Prices are on the rate card.