Palace of the Dukes and States of Burgundy

The full story

The palace probably goes back to the Merovingian period. In the 12th century it was still only a simple residence built against the castrum wall and used by the Capetian dukes. From 1365, the Valois dukes gradually rebuilt it. The Bar tower, first called the “new tower”, served in particular as a home for the duchess and her children. At the foot of the main building, the Square des Ducs occupies the site of the small garden that Margaret of Flanders, wife of Philip the Bold, had laid out around a large pond.

Philip the Good’s residence, built from 1450 to 1456, is a symbol of the dukes’ power. Its vaulted ground floor, now home to the wedding hall, held a large cellar, the jewel room, where jewellery and tableware were kept, and the buttery, the wine store. On the first floor, the duke and duchess lodged during their visits, with the great hall for receptions. The Terrace tower, today the Philippe le Bon tower, was raised at the same time to serve the different floors. Doomed to demolition in the 17th century, it was saved in the end and used in the following century to observe the sky. In the ducal kitchens, the keystone of the eight-ribbed vault opens onto the air intake duct.

After Burgundy became part of the kingdom of France in 1477, the ducal residence became the “King’s Lodge”. In 1614, the governor Roger de Saint-Lary, Duke of Bellegarde, added a gallery in the Renaissance taste. The Estates of Burgundy, the assembly of the clergy, the nobility and the third estate, met in Dijon every three years from 1668. For them, a building project of more than a century began in 1681: the hall of the Estates, then Jacques Gabriel’s staircase, built from 1733 to 1738, whose vaults now hold the municipal archives. Opposite, the semicircle of arcades of the Place Royale, completed in 1689, received in 1725 an equestrian statue of Louis XIV, melted down during the Revolution.

The drawing school founded in 1766 by the sculptor François Devosge moved into the palace, which housed a museum from 1799. In the mid-19th century, Louis Belin built the museum wing on the site of the Sainte-Chapelle, which closed off the Cour de Bar until 1802 and had been the seat of the Order of the Golden Fleece. From 2009 to 2019, the renovation of the museum added a “golden roof”, the signature of the architect Yves Lion. Long after the dukes, Canon Kir, mayor of Dijon, used to offer a white wine with blackcurrant liqueur to the visitors he received in the ducal kitchens.