Lyon, Festival of Lights – (December 8, 2011) – Christie®, a world leader in high-performance digital projection systems for major events, will be on hand at four prominent sites at Lyon’s Fête des Lumières through its partnerships with technical service providers.The Festival of Lights came to be on the evening of December 8, 1852, when the city’s inhabitants spontaneously lit up their windows and balconies with candles and took to the streets to celebrate the installation of the statue of the Virgin Mary on Fourvière Hill. While the city’s residents have retained the tradition of putting candles in their windows down to the present day, since 1989 the Festival of Lights has become a truly festive delight for the eyes.With the Festival set to run this year from December 8 to 11, Lyon, in its role as “the capital of light”, will welcome some of the world’s top artists and become for the 13th consecutive year the scene of one of the largest urban events in the world. Nearly 4 million visitors from around the world are expected to come to explore the city and enjoy the grandiose, poetic and truly out of the ordinary artistic creations. For four nights, the city’s monuments, rivers and hills will be transformed into a vast expanse of artistic expression for the lighting designers, architects, sculptors and video artists who have been selected for the creativity of their projects.