The Rue Sainte-Catherine (French pronunciation: [ʁy sɛ̃t katʁin]) is a very old street at the foot of the slopes of La Croix-Rousse quarter, in the 1st arrondissement of Lyon.

The Rue Sainte-Catherine has an east-west axis and is parallel of the Place des Terreaux, and therefore is in the historic center of Lyon, overlooking the Hôtel de Ville of the 1st arrondissement.

This situation is relatively unusual because it is quite rare for a street with a bad reputation to be as close to the City Hall of a big city, to the richest shopping areas (Rue Édouard-Herriot, Rue de la République...), to the Opera Nouvel and to the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon : this is a paradox indeed very representative of the spirit of the slopes of the Croix-Rousse quarter, which the last "flat" street before the slopes, the Rue Sainte-Catherine, is the natural boundary, geographic alter ego of the Boulevard de la Croix-Rousse.

The name of the street refers to St. Catherine of Alexandria, a saint much worshipped in the Middle Ages who died in 307 as martyr under Maximinus.

[3] At the corner of the Rue d'Algérie and the Rue Saint-Marie-des-Terreaux, a statue of Catherine of Alexandria, carved in 1866 by Joseph-Hughes Fabisch to replace a seventeenth century work by Bridant, also recalls the memory of this hospital which depends the Hôpital de la Charité de Lyon.

[1] On 9 February 1943, the Germans arrested 86 people at the headquarters of the Union Générale des Juifs de France at No.

[7] Following the more restrictive measures taken by local authorities and the recent decision to renovate the neighborhood slopes (passage Thiaffait, montée de la Grande Côte...), it seems that the atmosphere of the Rue Sainte-Catherine tends to evolve gradually to a relative calm and gentrification, since many bars are now closed and some of them are replaced by respectable pubs for middle-class youth, including the Shamrock.

The street remains famous for its many bars and pubs surrounded with kebabs and groceries shops.