Hospices de Beaune
The Hôtel-Dieu bears witness to the flamboyant Gothic style of the 15th century with its glazed roofs, its turrets and its half-timbered gallery. Every year in November, there is an auction of the cuvées from the Hospices vineyard.
The history of the Hospices de Beaune
1443 : the Hundred Years’ War was not yet over, Beaune was suffering from poverty and famine, medieval mercenaries plundered and laid waste to the countryside. Three-quarters of the town’s inhabitants were destitute and the majority of them declared paupers. To purchase their salvation, Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife, Guigone de Salins, decided to build a hospital for the poor, the ‘Hospices Civils de Beaune’. They endowed it with an annual income drawn from their salt manufactures and their own personal funds obtained from wine sales.
On 1 January 1452, the hospital received its first patient. From then on and right up to the 20th century the Sisters of the Hospices de Beaune cared for numerous ill people in several large wards. The Hôtel-Dieu quickly gained a great reputation among the poor, but also among nobles and bourgeois classes too whose donations allowed the hospital to be extended and improved by the creation of new wards and the provision of works of art. The Hôtel-Dieu thus became a genuine ""Palais pour les Pôvres (Palace for the Poor) ""
The wine-growing heritage of the Hospices de Beaune
The Hospices de Beaune is still a major wine-growing estate today : all of the vines come from bequests and donations and their production is sold at auction every year on the 3rd Sunday in November at the most famous charity sale in the world. The Hospices thus play a leading role in the two most important activities of Beaune and its region : tourism and wine.
Nowadays the Hôtel-Dieu covers a large part of the town of Beaune in Côte d'Or with its museum, Gothic facades, flamboyantly colourful, geometrically-patterned glazed roofs, three courtyards, outbuildings, a 15th century bastion and hundreds of metres of cellars which house the private wine collection of the Hospices.
The buildings are exceptionally well preserved and are a rare example of civil architecture from the Middle Ages, illustrating the close ties which existed at that time between Burgundy and Flanders, then the new vassal of the House of Valois. The halls house a vast collection of objects, furniture and tapestries from that period, which Nicolas Rolin had provided at the foundation of the hospital (a detailed inventory of 1501 gives a more precise idea). The objects come from three distinct sources : the hospital foundation itself, requirements needed to enable a hospital to function and bequests and donations from benefactors and former patients. Since 1988 a complete study has been made by Burgundy inventory authority which has brought to light some 2,500 pieces of furniture (beds, chests, etc) and 2,500 objects (tapestries, paintings, sculptures, pharmacy jars, etc), all of which are regularly part of a restoration programme.
The climax of the visit is the polyptych of the Last Judgment by Rogier van der Weyden, a unique, world-famous masterpiece, but it is not by any means the only treasure in the medieval hospital. These include the vast ‘Salle des Pôvres’ with its rich sculpted and painted ceiling, the Gothic chapel, the kitchen with its roasting spit operated by an automaton and the apothecary’s dispensary with its china and pewter collections...
Lastly, it is worth knowing that the Hospices de Beaune was the setting for several scenes from the mythical film « La Grande Vadrouille » in the entrance courtyard and the ""Salle des Pôvres"".
After visiting the Hospices de Beaune, set off along the ‘Route des Grands Crus de Bourgogne’ wine trail.
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