The A7 autoroute, also known as the Autoroute du Soleil (Motorway of the Sun), is a 306 km (190 mi) motorway in France that links Lyon to Marseille. It forms the southern leg of the route from Paris to the Mediterranean, carrying European routes E15, E80, E712, and E714. Historically, a section in Marseille was built by Nazi invaders in 1941, while the Lyon section was downgraded in 2017 and officially declassified in 2020, becoming the urban boulevard M7. The motorway experiences heavy traffic year-round due to freight transport, but it becomes notoriously congested during summer holiday weekends, with jams occasionally stretching for hundreds of kilometers. To compensate for the downgraded Lyon section, a new motorway, the A44, is planned to bypass the city and connect to the A7.