On your right, you will see a massive pale stone facade framed by twin square towers with intricately patterned tile roofs, centered around a tall, slender spire piercing the sky.
You have arrived at the Cathedral of Saint-Bénigne. This site has been a spiritual anchor for a very long time. Back in the year five eleven, a bishop constructed a crypt here to hold the sarcophagus of Saint Bénigne, a local Christian martyr.
Fast forward to the year nine ninety. The monastery buildings were falling into ruin, so a monk named Guillaume de Volpiano was brought in to revitalize the site. Guillaume did not do things by halves. He brought in Italian builders and constructed a magnificent three-level circular building, known as a rotonda, directly over the tomb. The upper level of this rotonda had a dome with a hole in the center to let light pour all the way down to the lower floors, deliberately echoing the Pantheon in Rome.
Today, only the lowest subterranean level remains, a circular vault roughly sixteen point five meters across. You can pull up your screen to see a stark nineteen nineteen photograph of this atmospheric crypt. The rest of the original structure collapsed over time, leading the monks to rebuild the main church in the soaring Gothic style between twelve eighty and thirteen ninety-three.
Take a look at the before and after image on your device to see how the majestic gothic arches and soaring vaults of the main central hall, the nave, have been beautifully preserved through the generations.
Despite its long monastic history, this building only officially became a cathedral in seventeen ninety-two. Over the centuries, it has seen lightning strikes, structural collapses, and massive architectural overhauls.
But perhaps the most dramatic event to happen on the very square where you are standing took place much more recently, in nineteen fifty-one. The cathedral's vicar had grown entirely fed up with what he saw as the pagan, hyper-commercialization of a religious holiday. So, to make his point, he hung an effigy of Santa Claus on the cathedral gates and set it on fire. The burning of Santa Claus made national headlines. But the mayor of Dijon was not about to let the church ruin the fun. He immediately retaliated by hoisting a local fireman wearing a fake beard onto the roof of the city hall to cheerfully wave at the delighted crowds below.
If you want to explore the grand interior or perhaps hear the magnificent eighteenth-century organ, the cathedral is open daily from nine A-M to twelve P-M, and again in the afternoon from two to six thirty P-M, closing slightly earlier at six P-M on weekends.
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