Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy

Stand for a moment on the pale stone of the square and listen. Water hisses from small jets set flush into the paving, and children run through the spray. In front of you, a long, calm facade curves around the open space like a pair of arms. The stone is honey-coloured in the morning and almost white at noon. This is the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, and it is still a working building. Dijon's city hall sits inside, along with one of the oldest art museums in France.

The semicircle you are standing in is the Place de la Libération. It was laid out in the late seventeenth century as a royal square, designed to frame the palace like a stage set. The plans came from the circle of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the architect who also worked at Versailles. That explains the feeling of order here. The arcades, the rooflines and the regular windows all follow one controlled design. It looks like one building from one period. It is not.

Here is the first surprise. Behind this classical front, much older walls are still standing. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this was the seat of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. That was a family of four rulers who, for about a century, governed lands that stretched from here to the North Sea. Their names sound like characters in a novel. Philip the Bold. John the Fearless. Philip the Good. Charles the Bold. For a time, their court was richer than the court of the French king.

Think about what that meant. The dukes controlled Flanders and much of the Low Countries, with cities like Bruges and Ghent full of merchants and cloth. Money from that trade paid for painters, sculptors and musicians. Philip the Good founded the Order of the Golden Fleece, a club of knights that became one of the most prestigious honours in Europe. Dijon was the old heart of this state, the place where the dukes chose to be buried.

Now look up. Above the roofs rises a square tower in plain, solid stone. This is the Tower of Philip the Good, built in the fifteenth century. It was meant to be seen from far away — a statement of power over the town. Visitors can still climb it, up a narrow spiral of more than three hundred steps. From the top terrace, on a clear day, you can see the roofs of Dijon, the glazed tiles of its churches, and the hills of the wine country to the south.

There is a second, older tower, called the Tower of Bar. It dates from the fourteenth century and is one of the oldest surviving parts of the ducal residence. Its name comes from a duke of Bar who, according to the usual account, was held prisoner here. Compare it with the taller tower. The Tower of Bar is heavier and more closed, built in a time when a palace still needed to be a fortress.

The second surprise is in the kitchens. The ducal kitchens were built in the fifteenth century, and they survive almost intact. The room is square, with six enormous fireplaces set into the walls. In the centre, stone ribs rise to a single opening in the vaulted ceiling. That opening let out smoke and heat. Imagine whole animals turning on spits, cooks shouting, and the air thick with woodsmoke and roasting fat. Feasts for hundreds of guests were prepared in this one room.

Now move inside the museum, to the great hall known as the Guards' Room. This is where most visitors fall quiet. In the middle stand the tombs of Philip the Bold and of John the Fearless with his wife, Margaret of Bavaria. The dukes lie in carved effigies, hands joined in prayer, with angels at their heads. The tombs were made for a monastery outside the city, the Charterhouse of Champmol. They came here after the French Revolution emptied that monastery.

Look below the effigies. Around the base of each tomb walks a procession of small figures in hooded robes. These are the mourners. Each one is different. One wipes his eyes. One hides his face completely in his hood. One reads from a book. The sculptor Claus Sluter, who came from the Low Countries, shaped the style of this work, and his followers completed it. Many people think these little figures carry more feeling than anything else in the building.

When the last duke, Charles the Bold, was killed in battle in 1477, the Burgundian state fell apart. The French crown took the duchy, and the palace changed its purpose. It became the meeting place of the States of Burgundy, the regional assembly. That is why it was rebuilt in the classical style. The assembly wanted a building that matched royal taste. So the medieval palace was wrapped inside a new body, rather than torn down.

The museum itself opened in the late eighteenth century, which makes it one of the oldest public museums in France. Its collections run from ancient Egypt to modern painting. After a long renovation, the galleries now move through time in a clear order, room after room. Even if art is not your main interest, walk through a few galleries. The windows give views back over the courtyards, and you can see how the old and new parts of the palace fit together.

There is a quieter detail worth noticing as you walk. People still get married here. People still come to pay local bills and sign papers. Officials walk the same corridors where ducal servants once carried trays from the kitchens. The building is not frozen as a monument. It has kept doing what palaces always did — hold the power of the place, in whatever form that power takes.

Before you leave, step back to the edge of the square. Watch the light move across the facade, and listen again to the water in the paving. Behind those even windows are a tower built for a duke, a kitchen built for feasts, and two tombs ringed by small stone mourners. As you walk away into the old streets, look for the patterned roofs and the narrow lanes. They belong to the same city the dukes knew.