5 Best Sights in Burgundy, France

With its steep, gabled roof colorfully tiled in intricate patterns, the famed Hospices de Beaune is this city’s top attraction—and one of Burgundy’s most iconic sights. Better known to some as the Hôtel-Dieu, it was founded in 1443 as a hospital to provide free care for the poor after the Hundred Years' War. The interior looks medieval but was repainted by 19th-century restorer Ouradou (Viollet-le-Duc's son-in-law); it centers on the grand salle, more than 160 feet long, with the original furniture, a great wooden roof, and the super-picturesque cour d'honneur. The Hospices carried on its medical activities until 1971—its nurses still wearing their habitlike uniforms—and the hospital's history is retraced in the museum, whose wide-ranging collections contain some odd medical instruments from the 15th century. You can also see a collection of tapestries that belonged to the repentant founder of the Hospices, ducal chancellor Nicolas Rolin, who hoped charity would relieve him of his sins—one of which was collecting wives. Outstanding are both the tapestry he had made for Madame Rolin III, with its repeated motif of "my only star," and one relating the legend of St-Eloi and his miraculous restoration of a horse's leg.

But the showstopper at the Hôtel-Dieu is Rogier Van der Weyden's stirring, gigantic 15th-century masterpiece The Last Judgment, commissioned for the hospital's chapel by Rolin. The intense colors and mind-tripping imagery were meant to scare the illiterate patients into religious submission. Notice the touch of misogyny; more women are going to hell than to heaven, while Christ, the judge, remains completely unmoved. The Hospices own around 150 acres of the region's finest vineyards, much of it classified as Grand or Premier Cru.

All that remains of this former charter house—a half-hour walk or a 10-minute bus ride from Dijon's center and now surrounded by a psychiatric hospital—are the exuberant 15th-century church porch and the Puits de Moïse (Well of Moses), one of the greatest examples of late-medieval sculpture. The well was designed by Flemish master Claus Sluter, who also created several other masterpieces during the late 14th and early 15th centuries, including one of the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy. If you closely study Sluter's six large sculptures, you will discover the Middle Ages becoming the Renaissance right before your eyes. Representing Moses and five other prophets, they are set on a hexagonal base in the center of a basin and remain the most compellingly realistic figures ever crafted by a medieval sculptor. The Well of Moses can only be visited as part of a guided tour arranged by the tourist office; reservations are required.

This stately 17th-century Renaissance mansion has a characteristic red, yellow, and green Burgundian tile roof—a tradition whose disputed origins lie either with the Crusades and the adoption of Arabic tiles or with Philip the Bold's wife, Marguerite of Flanders.

The village of Cluny was built to serve the abbey's more practical needs, and several fine Romanesque houses around Rue d'Avril and Rue de la République—including the so-called Hôtel des Monnaies—are prime examples of the period's different architectural styles.

This former coaching inn is a handsome example of 16th-century architecture.