Burgundy: the unusual and secret Côte d’Or: Weekend ideas in Burgundy

Nuggets between Auxois and Morvan, in the land of Alésia

In Asterix, when asked where is Alesia, Chef Abraracourcix gets carried away, yelling: ” Alésia? Don’t know Alésia! I don’t know where Alésia is! Nobody knows where Alésia is! “

NowAuxois, precisely, it is the country of Alésia, this country that Julius Caesar himself was not able to locate precisely, which has earned us today endless debates between Jurassians and Burgundians.

In the end, it’s been over 2,000 years that nobody has known Auxois. So, it’s time to discover this “unknown land” in which unexpected treasures are revealed: Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, where the ghosts of the monks are still moving, in an anise factory known all over the world; Bussy-Rabutin, with the castle of a libertine who did not settle down as he got older; Semur-en-Auxois, languid market town at the foot of its river, l’’Armançon, a small town that is pleasant to live in, away from the tourist flows.

Other original characters rest in peace around here, like Canon Kir, born and buried in Alise Sainte-Reine, a stone’s throw from a standing Vercingetorix. The man hid under his cassock a good-natured temper and a good descent. Unlike Bernard de Clairvaux, who was by no means cheerful. There are some areas where the future saint was great, you will understand it by going to visit Fontenay Abbey.

Hot air balloon flight over a Gauls nest

AT Semur-en-Auxois, we find a small Italian theater nicely renovated, a small museum remained in its juice with its two Corot found … but also France hot air balloons, with its offices by the water. This company, which has become the French leader in the transport of passengers in a hot air balloon, for more than 30 years, had not yet thought of offering a flight over Alésia.

Today, we can take a different look at a site that has become famous since Julius Caesar saw fit to tell in his own way how he had been able to put food to the cousins ​​of Asterix. From the nacelle, the oppidum reveals its mysteries to connoisseurs, the countryside is beautiful, the villagers are making signs, the cows are watching you pass, wagging their tails.

Vercingétorix suddenly appears in a giant version west of the oppidum. It is true that his statue sits here in majesty since 1865, even if it never looked like this representation in his life 19^e century, a discreet homage to Napoleon III… whose least merit has been to make Alésia the symbol of France which wins, burying old Jules and his rantings.

For those who are more down to earth, a visit to the site and the MuséoParc d’Alésia remains a very nice and informative family attraction, in the early days, especially if the exhibition of the moment is to your liking. In 2020, Gallic cuisine is in the spotlight. And in summer, attractions are multiplying, on the grass and even on the sand. They are crazy, these Gauls!

Semur-en-Auxois, the little-known jewel that wants to remain so

Semur-en-Auxois is a languid market town at the foot of its river, Armançon, a small town which is pleasant to live in, away from tourist flows. In Semur, a former comic book cinema producer opened a guesthouse full of original boards (and originals, not just on the walls). Each year in spring he invites his friends (Enki Bilal, Schuiten, Peeters, etc.) to come and decorate the city walls.

There is also a small, nicely renovated Italian theater, a museum that remains proud of its two found Corots and its rooms that remain as in their first days …

The city loves rituals. Every year, on May 31, for more than four centuries, shops have drawn their curtains, schools close their doors, it’s a public holiday, all Semur is on the mail: it’s the ring party !

A huge fair spans the entire length of the road, where you can find cold meats, shoes, treats, honey, soap and miraculous laundry.

But the real show is on the mall that it takes place. There, the greatest riders of Auxois compete in a terrible, merciless race to win the prestigious gold ring.

Anyone who has never attended the Feast of the Ring cannot claim to know the Auxois.

Walk between the forge and the forest, from Buffon to Châtillon

A walk to do in two or three stages. The first, around Buffon, in complete freedom withapplication Walks in Burgundy, who was the first to accompany the visitor in a private enclosure. A symbolic place to better understand Buffon.

The famous Great Forge is located in Buffon, a village near Montbard which is bathed in the Burgundy Canal. This site, whose construction began in 1768, can be considered as one of the first integrated factories: the premises are arranged to optimize the stages of manufacturing. In addition, workers are housed on the site and have access to a vegetable patch, a bakery and a chapel.

Access to the blast furnace is via a monumental staircase, which allowed distinguished guests to admire the molten metal flows. The forge produced ironwork and stair railings and was primarily his laboratory. AT Montbard, the city where Buffon was born, we visit the small museum that bears his name as well as his old study, in the neighboring park.

Direction Châtillonnais then to discover the new National forest park of Champagne and Burgundy. Stop at Châtillon-sur-Seine to greet the lady from Vix, or rather his treasure, found in the neighboring countryside. Starting with this huge bronze vase which was used to transport a wine that had nothing to do with the one you drink in Burgundy, since it was so sweet that it had to be cut with water.

Then champagne for some, or rather crémant, following the route of the same name, and hunting for the Templars for others (the other hunting being reserved for those who ride horses).

Le Café Parisien in Saulieu

Even Bernard Loiseau was going to take refuge there, when he had the cockroach, in this city of Saulieu which could seem harsh, in full winter. As for the traditional Morvan fir trees, they left the country to give joy to Parisians.

Jean-Marc Tingaud, old local child and renowned photographer in Paris, chose to save the Parisian coffee, an old café dating from 1832. Under the ice covering the walls, young and old alike always meet around the large tables for morning coffee, aperitif or lunch break.

Saulieu, it’s a little strange city, with a Pompon museum of another time which hides wonders and, in the street, enormous animal sculptures exposed each year by artists like Orlinski or Audiard. Suddenly, customers of the Côte d’Or are not disoriented, before going to test one of the most beautiful SPA in France. Contrast: next door, the city center is dying. Only the Sainte-Andoche basilica, which celebrated its 900th anniversary with contemporary museography, continues to fill up… for the holidays.

But Saulieu is above all a door giving access to a strange world, the Morvan, and a Park that celebrates half a century of existence. In the surrounding villages, there are old nostalgic people, who celebrate among themselves. We also meet Parisian actors like Jérôme Robart who come to play a play dedicated to Morvandelles nannies, in the village hall of Saint-Germain-de-Mauléon, where we are still sitting on the straw.

The palace found by the Dukes of Burgundy in Dijon

The palace of the dukes of Burgundy, long time, it was necessary to seek it. He had disappeared behind a facade unit wanted by Louis XIV, who had instructed his architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart to create a place of power more suited to his image and his time. Farewell, old home of the dukes. The magnificent kitchens, the Guard room, the Philippe le Bon tower and the Bar tower, the Passage des Princes: so many buildings, rooms, rooms that have long been dispersed within a palace dedicated to administrative tasks.

After ten years of restoration, the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts, housed in one of the wings of the central building, reopened in May 2019. The second museum in France after the Louvre to occupy an old hotel in the Valois era has entered modernity without sacrificing anything that made its charm and historical interest.

Between the Ducal dwelling, medieval towers and extensions of the 17^e, 18^e and 20^e centuries, the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon is a time machine on almost 50 rooms and 4,200 m². Nearly six centuries of architecture today bring imagination and emotion. The creation of modern and contemporary art spaces, on the ground floor, next to one of the most trendy boutiques in France, has helped to offset the weight of ducal and royal history.

Dijon-Vignes

The Palace of the Dukes and States of Burgundy is a district in itself, the epicenter today of downtown Dijon, open to contemporary town planning.

The old quarter of the antique dealers has become an “arts district”: the design, the tea rooms, the shops have given color and life to streets that have remained in their medieval juice or even simply from another time. This city with a heart of stone is also slowly returning to “green”, while waiting for the vines to grow back, at the gates of the future City of Gastronomy and Wine, intended to remind, in 2021, that Dijon was once a wine-growing village.

“Blue asses” is the name given to winegrowers who made up over a third of the population. Philippe Le Hardi had imposed by edict the Pinot Noir in place of the Gamay, of poor quality. In addition to organized banquets in the museum’s current tomb hall, wine was used as currency. Tapestries and draperies against barrels. For the diplomatic cause too, the precious liquid was worth gold.

In the square bearing the name of the Dijon sculptor François Rude, tribute is paid by hammer to a young Bareuzai who shows off proudly. The “low rosés” worn by the pickers recall the color of the legs after the trampling of the grapes in the vats.

Have a glass of Burgundy Côte d´Or on the terrace, a new appellation that hits the headlines, before going on a market tour under halls which are not signed Gustave Eiffel, but which resemble it. Perhaps there will one day be a museum here dedicated to this other child of the country.

The amazing gingerbread museum in Dijon

A museum ? No, a living heritage company proud of its present as well as its past, which we did not imagine so tasty, so exotic. To understand this, do not miss the start of the tour of the Mulot and Petitjean gingerbread factory, in an identical office. The decor makes in the home recuperation, just wood, metal, objects that the last descendant of the Petitjean family has found, dusted, cleaned.

A sincere and quite moving tribute to the world of work, whose current representatives are guiding our steps. Guides who know the little secrets of the house by heart, and allow you to understand what happened, in these premises, which have been enlarged over the centuries. By interposed screen, of course, because you have to live with the times. Between two machines, between two films, we come across others, silent but very real actors, because it is them, behind the windows, which allow Mulot & Petitjean to produce more than 500 tonnes of gingerbread per year.

If you are not a great gingerbread lover, you become one after an hour of visiting, when you find yourself in this hall-shop which presents the products in packaging which refers for some to old advertisements.

Until the creation of this odorous, playful and instructive museum tour at the same time, you couldn’t visit the last factory where you continue to produce, with the same rigor, the same taste for a job well done, “the real Dijon gingerbread ”.

A bread removed by the dukes from the mouths of the Flemings, more than 600 years ago. Even if it’s time for industrial tourism, there are not so many places likely to share so much emotion around a product.

Mulot and Petitjean Gingerbread Factory : 6, bd de l’Ouest, in Dijon. Phone. : 03 80 30 07 10. On leaving Dijon. Bus lines 10 and 12, Perrières stop. Tue-Sat

La Karrière: an increasingly rock n’roll coast

There are two seasons to go up the coast, from Dijon to Beaune. In fall, of course, when it is better to ride a bicycle than by car on narrow roads where the spectacle of the colors of the vine and the grape pickers attracts visitors from all over the world. Gevrey-Chambertin, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges… The names are famous, the wines overpriced, but there are more and more young chefs who take over old houses, and renew the terroir with happiness.

In summer, there are festivals, classics and less classic, like this coast that really moves, at times.

THE festival not to be missed, in mid-August, hides in an old quarry, in Villars-Fontaine, above Nuits-Saint-Georges. Sweet crazy people took it over to make it an open-air art gallery with frescoes dedicated to street art and a musical program mixing classic and contemporary.

The Karriere (this is his name) soon to be classified as a “historic rock” monument in France? Rock here is back in force, in the castles of Pommard and Gilly, so chic ostensibly.

For its part, Beaune has been resisting, with its baroque festival, for more than 30 years. But it’s Beaune…

Classic Beaune, new Beaune!

Beaune, capital of Burgundy, city of the Hospices … but no longer dukes! You can’t have it all … Surrounded by ramparts hugging it like the barrel staves, the city was the seat of the ducal administration, which is not so bad.

It radiates in all seasons under the colorful roofs of a Hospital that we owe to Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of the duke of Burgundy Philippe le Bon and good man; at least he did. To be forgiven for all his villainies, he offered the services of the painter Rogier Van der Weyden, who immortalized him with his wife by his side in the Polyptych of the Last Judgment, one of the most famous works of Flemish painting from the 15th^e s, still visible here.

Beaune is above all a village where it is good to wander, nose in the wind, day and night. A city that celebrates wine all year round, but especially in November, when the Hospices for sale attracts beautiful people.

In Beaune, you have to visit the Champy House, the oldest wine house in Burgundy, which reopened in 2019 after one of these intelligent facelifts as we know – and we can – offer them here.

And to relax, outside the wine bars, there are Cinema workshops, where we can find the pupils of Claude Lelouch and the Beaunois good complexion or adoption, the time of a concert, of a projection.

Beaune the surprising, proud to have the only real mustard production unit that can be visited, the fallot mustard.