Dijon - Sans Moutarde

Last Saturday, on my trip to Burgundy, we arrived in Dijon at night, and ended up wandering around the streets in the rain. The former ducal palace is lit up at night, and the plaza in front of it had fountains with lights that change color and intensity. The next day we went up in the tower, which dates from the 15th century. The semicircular design of the plaza was by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the architect of Versailles, in the 17th century. It was pretty foggy, so we couldn't see much past the buildings immediately around us, but it was a pretty nice tower, anyway.




A large part of the palace itself was made into a fine arts museum, of which the most famous room is the Salle des Gardes. There are three tombs with recumbent figures, John the Fearless with Margaret of Bavaria, and Philip the Bold, as well Burgundian tapestries and altarpieces.




When I visited there was an exhibition of movie costumes going on, dispersed throughout the museum. Most were gorgeous robes and dresses from French period films which I'd never seen, but they chose their most famous gallery for the display of a couple costumes from Harry Potter. Nice.



Dijon has many beautiful churches, the most famous of which is Eglise Notre Dame, only because it is right on the tourist circuit marked on the sidewalk by arrows and an owl logo. At the church, the marked path takes you to an owl sculpted into the side of the church, and the legend is that, upon touching this owl, one can make a wish and it will come true. Apparently, a lot of people have tried it, because that poor owl was pretty worn down.




Although Notre Dame is the most famous church in Dijon, it is not the main cathedral, which is the Cathedrale St.-Benigne. My camera died, so I don't have any photos, but the most interesting aspect of the church is actually what is now underground. There is ongoing archeological excavation of the site and a collection of artifacts, some paleolithic from the sources of the Seine in Burgundy. Because the original foundations of the abbey there date from 1000 AD, they are now underground due to the construction and accumulation of earth around it . The crypt of the cathedral is even older, and features a rotunda of three circles of pillars, echoing the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, a type of rotunda of which only 8 are known in the world.

When you say Dijon, everybody thinks of mustard, but now I will always think of the treasures of Christian religious art there. I didn't have any really special food in Dijon, but I suppose a blog entry about traveling to Burgundy would not be complete without someone eating Escargots de Bourgogne, so I'll show you when I ate them (clumsily) in Paris. I didn't have any in Dijon because I wasn't hungry after my enormous lunch in Vezelay and spending the large part of the day sitting on a bus.




The best thing about eating escargot has to be the rich sauce of parsley and melted butter, which is probably a magic sauce that might make anything taste good. Although escargot are offered to tourists all over the place, I think it pays to go to a nice place because snails can turn tough when they're not cooked right, or maybe if they're not fresh. At Le Bousquet, on Avenue Bousquet, 7eme arrondisement near the Eiffel Tower, they were delicious.