Burgundy Canal and the canal port

The full story

The Burgundy Canal was a long-running project. Born of the wish to compete with the Briare Canal and to boost the region’s economy, its route was chosen in 1724, but it took fifty years to arrange the funding: in 1773, the royal treasury took charge of the Yonne side and the Estates of Burgundy of the Saône side. Begun in 1775, the works were halted by the Revolution in 1793. The plan of Dijon’s port had been approved by the province’s representatives on 15 July 1784. It was laid out on the cemetery of the general hospital and on land belonging to the seminary.

In the middle of the public garden stands the obelisk, raised to mark the port symbolically. Its estimate was drawn up on 15 March 1786 by engineer Émiland Gauthey, from a design by the Parisian architect Jean-Charles Bellu. Its bronze medallions, which showed Louis XVI and the Prince of Bourbon-Condé, were removed in 1792. When the monument was restored in 1979, it received four plaques telling the canal’s story. But they do not match the compass points carved on the steps: the plaque celebrating the boat from Saint-Jean-de-Losne faces Paris, and the one for the boat from Paris faces Saint-Jean-de-Losne!

When the basin was filled, early in the 19th century, the surroundings were still uninhabited. The port gradually attracted houses, sheds and open-air dance cafés. Wine from the Côte, wheat and flour were shipped from here, and Gustave Eiffel’s family, driven by his mother Mélanie Moneuse, made its fortune as exclusive distributor of coal from Épinac. Prosperous until the 1860s, the port then suffered from the canal’s many locks, 189 along its whole length, and lost its trade to the railway. In 1876 the district had only 854 inhabitants.

As early as 1949, the Sébille plan proposed moving the port to Longvic. After the decision of 1977, blocks of flats rose on 70,000 m² of freed land and the green spaces were redesigned by André Holodynski. The lock keeper’s house at lock 55, which closes the port downstream, is still used to run the canal. Only the obelisk is protected as a historic monument, since 1964. Herons and egrets live on the basin’s island, and water jousting still livens up the port festival at the end of June.