Sunday in la Borgogne

Last night I had the most agreeable and delicious (unaccompanied) dinner I’ve had so far. After a day of conscientious art and wine tourism in Beaune, I returned to Dijon and discovered the Place Emile Zola. Perfectly scaled – a bit broader than the three-story height of its buildings, it was full of tables from the many surrounding restaurants. A scattering of plane trees – called plantain’s in French – the chattering of animated conversations and the scurrying of waiters – all were bathed in that beautiful extended twilight that I have grown so used to. I selected a place – Les Moules Zola – and ordered moules marinières, frites and a carafe of white wine. Absolutely perfect.

That morning, I took the train to Beaune. The railroad station was a moderate hike from the center that was – I won’t say crawling – dense with tourists and attendant services. The big attraction from an artistic point of view is the Hôtel-Dieu or Hospices. A local nobleman, concerned about disease and poverty following the 100 Years War, built it in the Mid-15th Century. The main space – a huge barn-like room with carved and painted trusses – had two rows of Pullman-like curtained beds along both long walls. They were separated by the walls by aisles permitting the patients to be attended to by nurses (nuns) without impeding their view of an altar at one end of the space. The altarpiece – a magnificent polyptic painted by Roger van der Weyden – of the Last Judgment is now housed in a climate-controlled space across the courtyard. Ordinarily, the patients would view the exterior panels – monochrome representations of saints and donors. Once a week, a High Mass would be celebrated and the full glory of the richly colored and gilded painting of enthroned Jesus and an angel weighing the fate of a parade of nude mortals would be revealed. I imagine for the infirm, one viewing a week would be more than enough.

Once, I paid my respects to Western cultural heritage, I crossed the street to the Marché aux Vins. Twenty years ago, when I taught a summer course for the School of Architecture, I brought my students to Beaune and we followed a visit to the Hospice with a dégustation here. In those days, there were 35 wines to sample, yesterday a mere 15. By the time we entered the “chapel,� the final space with its high ceilings and the best and most expensive wines, we were already soused. This time, there was a time limit and an injunction to only sample a wine once. I joined a Japanese visitor and eventually a group of Belgians – they seem omnipresent. We were given score sheets and I tried to be as objective as I could – the Mersault and the, believe it or not, Nuits-Saint-Georges were my favorites.