Talant

The full story

Perched 353 m above sea level, west of Dijon, the rocky spur of Talant offers views on a clear day as far as the Jura, and even Mont Blanc. Yet until the 12th century, the “mans de Talant” was an uninhabited, almost cursed place, said to be haunted by fairies. It then belonged to the abbey of Saint-Bénigne. Odo III was looking for a safer refuge than his ducal palace in Dijon. North of the castle, he founded a fortified new town and a priory for a few monks of Saint-Bénigne.

To populate his new town, the duke welcomed serfs fleeing the oppression of their lords, drawn by freedom. In November 1216, he granted the inhabitants a charter: they could govern themselves and were exempted from taxes and military service. After the duke’s death in September 1218, his wife Alix de Vergy ran the duchy until their son Hugh IV came of age. In 1376, Talant had 134 hearths, about 700 inhabitants. Two fairs and a market were held there, helped by Lombard money changers, in other words bankers.

The castle had a large main building, 45 m by 11 m, flanked by two round towers and roofed with coloured tiles, along with outbuildings, a cellar and a chapel linked by a covered gallery. John the Fearless, who probably never stayed there, called it “the finest, the most lordly, and one of the keys of my duchy”. The town was entered through the Dijon Gate, defended by a drawbridge and two round towers and open only to people on foot or on horseback, or through the Crossbowmen’s Gate, the only one carts could pass. After the Wars of Religion, the fortress seemed too great a threat to Dijon: that is why it was dismantled.

Little remains, but the essentials can still be seen. The Confrérie tower, which guarded the Dijon Gate, and the base of the Chapitre tower escaped demolition; inside that tower, a boundary stone of 1570 bears the arms of Dijon. The castle cellar, a vaulted cave 25.80 m long where wine was aged, gradually fell into oblivion after the demolition. Rediscovered in 1848, it was restored from 1971 and reopened in September 1983. The church of Notre-Dame, built under the patronage of the abbot of Saint-Bénigne, is described by the town as the first Gothic church of the duchy; it was listed as a historic monument in 1908. It houses an organ built in 1958 for Taizé and bought by Talant in 1974, as well as figurative stained-glass windows by Gérard Garouste that pay tribute to the women of the Bible.