Beaune: The Hospices, the Marché aux Vins and the Collegiate Church

Required Activities

• In the courtyard of the Hôtel-Dieu, pick out the four colours in the glazed tiles — red, brown, yellow and green — then look up at the great hall on the street side and notice it is roofed in slate instead: imported slate cost more than tiles, which is why the poor got the grander roof. Finish in the climate-controlled room with Rogier van der Weyden's Last Judgement, sawn through its thickness so that you can see the front and the back of the altarpiece at once

• Taste your way through the former church of the Cordeliers, founded in the 13th century and now the Marché aux Vins, and try to place two wines on the map of the climats before you are told what they are

• Visit the Cité des Climats et Vins de Bourgogne in Beaune, on the UNESCO-listed climats of Burgundy

• Go into the choir of the collegiate church of Notre-Dame and follow the Life of the Virgin across the hangings Canon Le Coq gave the church in 1500, scene by scene; on the way out, look up at the bell tower, whose Gothic spire was replaced between 1580 and 1588 by the domed cap Hugues Sambin designed

• In the salle des pôvres — nearly 50 m long under a painted roof built like an upturned ship's hull — find the dragon mouths the roof beams come out of, then the carved heads of Beaune burghers each paired with the animal that stood for their particular vice, and on the floor Rolin's motto, the single word Seulle with a star, for the one lady in his thoughts