Porte Guillaume

The full story

Before the triumphal arch, there was a real gate in the ramparts. The gate in the 12th-century town wall closed the town to the west, near the abbey of Saint-Bénigne, on the side of the suburb that also bore the name Guillaume. The name is that of William of Volpiano, a Benedictine monk from Turin who became abbot of the Dijon monastery in 989 and was behind the rotunda of Saint-Bénigne. The gate saw war: during the siege of 1513, on 11 September, the attackers broke through the rampart linking it to the Porte d’Ouche.

In the 18th century Dijon, which had lost its status as a stronghold in 1711, embellished its entrances. Between 1721 and 1725, the new Rue Condé, today’s Rue de la Liberté, linked the Place Royale to this western gate, which also took the name of the Condés, governors of Burgundy. In 1786 the old gate was destroyed. In its place, architect Jean-Philippe Maret and contractor Jacques Caristie raised a triumphal arch, completed in 1788: two massive piers support an entablature, the upper part of the arch, decorated with four reliefs.

These reliefs are the work of Claude-François Attiret, a sculptor from Franche-Comté. On the Place Darcy side, one genius hands a document to Minerva and another presents the arms of the Condés to Burgundy. On the Rue de la Liberté side, the allegory of Dijon stands beside the Muse of History. For the tourist office, these scenes evoke the Condés’ goodwill towards the province, thanks to the wisdom of their government.

In the 19th century the ramparts disappeared around it. In the 1860s, the rampart linking it to the Rasoir tower was pulled down to open Rue du Docteur-Chaussier, then Place Darcy was laid out in 1879-1880. A remnant of the fortifications and, for the City, the symbol of the entrance to Dijon, the gate was listed as a historic monument on 27 July 1938. Today it can be reached from the Darcy tram stop.