Dijon: The Covered Market, the Mustard and the Pain d’Épices
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France
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1 day
Dijon: The Covered Market, the Mustard and the Pain d’Épices
250 + 100 XP
Dijon has an agri-food tradition of its own — mustard, blackcurrant liqueur, pain d'épices — and an iron-framed market hall built to sell it. The city decided in 1868 on a covered market that would meet the new demands of hygiene, space, convenience and safety; the plans were drawn by the city architect F. Gouet and finished in 1869 by his successor, the engineer Louis-Clément Weinberger, and the hall was put up between 1873 and 1875 by the Fonderies et ateliers de construction de Fourchambault, on the site of the old Dominican convent and its 13th-century church. It covers 4,400 m² under a roof 13 m high, with four pavilions round two crossing aisles, and has been listed since 1975. Half of Dijon will tell you Gustave Eiffel designed it, because he was born in the city; the sources do not agree — fr.wikipedia says the plans were drawn on a proposal from Eiffel's own workshops, while the regional architecture council says his proposal was never taken up — and the roof being closely modelled on Baltard's halles in Paris does the rest of the work. Dijon mustard, meanwhile, is a method rather than a place: the name is not protected, a decree of 1937 made it generic, and eighty per cent of the seed comes from Canada.
Required Activities
1
of 6
Come on a market morning and read the ironwork overhead: in the spandrels of the great arches find the heads of roe deer, mouflon, boar and ox, with game, poultry, fish and eel beside them, then the medallions of Ceres for the harvest and Hermes for trade — and the vine tendrils carved on the capitals of the fluted columns, in a hall built for 246 shops and 728 stalls
2
of 6
Stand in the middle of the crossing and look up at the roof, then decide for yourself how much of Baltard's Paris halles is in it — and find the maker's name somewhere on the ironwork, because this hall was cast by the Fourchambault foundries, not by any Dijon workshop
3
of 6
Buy mustard in Dijon and ask the seller where the seed was grown — the published figure is eighty per cent from Canada, a small share from Burgundy and the rest from eastern Europe — then ask what makes it Dijon mustard, since the name is not a protected appellation at all but a method, generic by a decree of 1937
4
of 6
Go through the museum space at Mulot & Petitjean's fabrique on the boulevard de l'Ouest — the oldest pain d'épices maker in Dijon, founded in 1796, baking on this site since 1912 and still working — then walk to the firm's old head office, the timber-framed Hôtel Catin de Richemont, a 15th-century house given what is probably Dijon's last neo-Gothic restoration in 1919
5
of 6
Order a kir and insist the wine is bourgogne aligoté, not any white: the cassis is there to take the acid off the aligoté, in about one part to four now where it was one to two. Then walk to the corner of the rue Montchapet and the rue Constantine, where a waiter at the café Montchapet is said to have first put the two together in 1904 — Canon Félix Kir, Dijon's mayor from 1945 to 1968, only lent the drink his name, by letter, in 1951
6
of 6
Walk into the Cité internationale de la gastronomie et du vin, opened on 6 May 2022 across the 6.5 hectares of the general hospital that Duke Eudes III founded in 1204 and that closed in 2015, and find the three old rooms inside the new one: the 1204 centre on the city's building history, the Chapelle des Climats in the hospital's great chapel off the cour Grangier, and the medieval chapelle Sainte-Croix de Jérusalem with its own period work
Come on a market morning and read the ironwork overhead: in the spandrels of the great arches find the heads of roe deer, mouflon, boar and ox, with game, poultry, fish and eel beside them, then the medallions of Ceres for the harvest and Hermes for trade — and the vine tendrils carved on the capitals of the fluted columns, in a hall built for 246 shops and 728 stalls
Stand in the middle of the crossing and look up at the roof, then decide for yourself how much of Baltard's Paris halles is in it — and find the maker's name somewhere on the ironwork, because this hall was cast by the Fourchambault foundries, not by any Dijon workshop
Buy mustard in Dijon and ask the seller where the seed was grown — the published figure is eighty per cent from Canada, a small share from Burgundy and the rest from eastern Europe — then ask what makes it Dijon mustard, since the name is not a protected appellation at all but a method, generic by a decree of 1937
Go through the museum space at Mulot & Petitjean's fabrique on the boulevard de l'Ouest — the oldest pain d'épices maker in Dijon, founded in 1796, baking on this site since 1912 and still working — then walk to the firm's old head office, the timber-framed Hôtel Catin de Richemont, a 15th-century house given what is probably Dijon's last neo-Gothic restoration in 1919
Order a kir and insist the wine is bourgogne aligoté, not any white: the cassis is there to take the acid off the aligoté, in about one part to four now where it was one to two. Then walk to the corner of the rue Montchapet and the rue Constantine, where a waiter at the café Montchapet is said to have first put the two together in 1904 — Canon Félix Kir, Dijon's mayor from 1945 to 1968, only lent the drink his name, by letter, in 1951
Walk into the Cité internationale de la gastronomie et du vin, opened on 6 May 2022 across the 6.5 hectares of the general hospital that Duke Eudes III founded in 1204 and that closed in 2015, and find the three old rooms inside the new one: the 1204 centre on the city's building history, the Chapelle des Climats in the hospital's great chapel off the cour Grangier, and the medieval chapelle Sainte-Croix de Jérusalem with its own period work
Before you go
The halles trade on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday only, from 7am to 1pm, and are shut on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday — so the ironwork activity needs one of those four mornings and is over by lunchtime. If you land on a Wednesday, the Fontaine d'Ouche market runs 8am to noon, and the Grésilles market is on Thursday and Saturday mornings. Mulot & Petitjean's fabrique on the boulevard de l'Ouest and the Cité internationale de la gastronomie both keep their own hours and closing days, so check them for the day you are in town.
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Challenge XP
250 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
350 XP
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