Place de la Libération
France > Burgundy > Dijon > South of the place de la Libération
On the south side of the place Darcy–church of St-Michel axis, and especially in the quartier behind place de la Libération, there's a concentration of magnificent hôtels from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These were built for the most part by men who had bought themselves offices and privileges with the Parliament of Burgundy, established by Louis XI in 1477 after the death of Duke Charles le Téméraire (the Bold) as a concession designed to win the compliance of this newly acquired frontier province. One of them, 4 rue des Bons-Enfants, houses the Musée Magnin (daily except Tues 10am–noon & 2–6pm; €3): the building, a seventeenth-century hôtel particulier, complete with its original furnishings, is more interesting than the exhibition of paintings by good but lesser-known artists, which constituted the personal collection of Maurice Magnin, and which were donated to the state in 1938. Other noteworthy houses are to be found nearby in rue Vauban, some showing the marks of Hugues Sambin's influence in their decorative details (lions' heads, garlands of fruit, tendrils of ivy and his famous chou bourguignon, or "Burgundy cabbage"): notably, nos. 3, 12, 21 and 23. Also worth a look for its elaborate west front is the church of St-Michel, a ten-minute walk to the east behind place du Théâtre.Continuing south from Musée Magnin, rue Ste-Anne, near place des Cordeliers, contains two museums. The Musée de la Vie Bourguignonne at no. 17 (daily except Tues: May–Sept 9am–6pm; Oct–April 9am–noon & 2–6pm; €2.80, Sun free, ticket includes the Musée d'Art Sacré), is housed in a stark, well-designed modern setting within a former convent, and is all about nineteenth-century Burgundian life, featuring costumes, furniture and domestic industries like butter-, cheese- and bread-making, along with a reconstructed kitchen. Practically next door at no. 15, the Musée d'Art Sacré (same hours and ticket as Musée de la Vie Bourguignonne) contains an important collection of church treasures, including a seventeenth-century statue of St Paul, the first in the world to be restored using an extraordinary technique that involves injecting the stone with resin and then solidifying the resulting compound using gamma rays. Formerly crumbling to dust, the guinea-pig saint is now completely firm. The streets to the west – especially rue Monge and rue Berbisey – are very active at night with lots of bars and restaurants. The latter ends in a curious postmodern perspective joke: a sort of parody of a medieval housing estate. In place Bossuet at the start of rue Monge is the Théâtre du Parvis St-Jean (Mon–Fri 9am–noon & 2–6pm; tel 03.80.30.63.53), whose innovative programmes of dance, theatre and performance art are worth looking out for. A little further to the west, the cathedral – the once great abbey church of St-Bénigne – is no longer of very great interest, although its garishly tiled roof and nineteenth-century spire dominate the skyline impressively enough. Its circular crypt is the original tenth-century Romanesque church. A little historical curiosity, however, is the fact that Raoul Glaber was a monk here: Glaber is famed as the historian who described the great burgeoning of Romanesque churches across France once the apocalyptic dangers of the first millennium were safely past and the earth began "clothing herself in a white garment of churches". In a chestnut-shaded garden next to the cathedral, the Musée Archéologique, 5 rue du Dr-Maret (daily except Tues: mid-May to Sept 9am–6pm; Oct to mid-May 9am–12.30pm & 1.30–6pm; €2.20, Sun free), has some extremely interesting finds from the Gallo-Roman period, especially funerary bas-reliefs depicting the perennial Gallic preoccupation with food and wine, and a collection of ex votos from the Source of the Seine, among them the little bronze of the goddess Sequana (Seine) upright in her bird-prowed boat. Also on show is Sluter's bust of Christ from the Chartreuse.
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