Dijon

Dijon began as Divio, a Roman settlement on the road between Lyon and Paris. The abbey of Saint-Bénigne grew around the cult of Saint Benignus, said to have brought Christianity to the area, and from the early 11th century the town was the seat of the Dukes of Burgundy. Under them it became one of Europe's great centres of art, learning and wealth, which is why the old centre still holds a ducal palace, a Gothic cathedral and the remains of the dukes' Carthusian monastery of Champmol. When the Burgundian state collapsed, Louis XI annexed the duchy in January 1477.

In 1513 Swiss and Imperial armies besieged Dijon; the town held out, and the inhabitants credited Our Lady of Good Hope with their deliverance. In the 19th century the engineer Henry Darcy gave the city a purified water supply a quarter-century before Paris, the railway made it a major junction, and new districts spread beyond the old walls. Dijon was occupied in 1814, by the Prussians in 1870–71 and by Germany from June 1940 until its liberation on 11 September 1944, but it escaped large-scale destruction, so its medieval and later houses survived.

After the war the city grew outwards with housing estates such as Les Grésilles and Fontaine d'Ouche, and a university campus opened in 1957. Trams returned in 2012; in 2015 the historic centre was listed by UNESCO as part of the Climats of Burgundy, and in 2017 the urban area became Dijon Métropole. The Cité internationale de la gastronomie et du vin opened in the old general hospital in 2022.

Dijon presents itself as a capital of gastronomy, and food and wine are central to its identity. Its biggest annual event is the International and Gastronomic Fair, founded by the mayor Gaston Gérard in 1921 and held each November; until 2019 it honoured a guest country every year. The city's best-known drink is named after a mayor too: Canon Félix Kir, who also gave his name to the lake he had dug on the Ouche. Every three years the Florissimo flower show fills the exhibition centre.

The ducal past shapes the townscape, and one small tradition sums up the local affection for it: people touch the worn stone owl on the side of Notre-Dame with the left hand to make a wish, and the owl has become the city's emblem, marking a walking trail through the centre. The composer Jean-Philippe Rameau was born here, and the engineer Gustave Eiffel went to school in the city. The Opéra de Dijon stages opera, ballet and concerts in the 1828 Grand Théâtre and the modern auditorium, Le Consortium is a well-known contemporary art centre, and La Vapeur and the Zénith host popular music.

Sport has a loyal following: Dijon FCO plays football, JDA Dijon basketball, and the Dijon Ducs ice hockey in the Magnus League. Outside the city, the circuit at Dijon-Prenois hosted the French Grand Prix five times between 1974 and 1984.

About 162,000 people lived in the commune in 2023, making Dijon the largest city of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, and it is a young city: in 2020 more than 43 per cent of residents were under 30, reflecting the university and its many schools, from the fine-arts school to a European campus of Sciences Po and the Burgundy School of Business. As regional capital and prefecture of the Côte-d'Or, it lives largely from public services, education, health and a strong pharmaceutical sector, alongside a long-standing food industry known for mustard, cassis, gingerbread and chocolate.

Most people live outside the old centre — in 19th-century districts around the station and the boulevards, inter-war residential streets, post-war estates and the growing suburbs such as Quetigny and Chenôve at the ends of the tram lines. Former military sites have been turned into new eco-districts with flats and shops. The Toison d'Or shopping centre to the north is the largest in the region.

The rhythm is provincial: markets at Les Halles, a proper lunch, and shops closed on Sundays. A few vines survive within the city limits, replanted in 1981 on the old ducal plot of Les Marcs d'Or. Recent years have also brought worry about drug-related violence in some estates, including shootings in Les Grésilles and Fontaine d'Ouche in 2024 and 2025.

Dijon mustard is the city's best-known product. It took its modern form in 1856, when Jean Naigeon replaced vinegar with verjuice — the sour juice of unripe grapes — in the traditional recipe; today white wine is generally used instead. The name is not protected, so "Dijon mustard" can be made anywhere, most of it is produced industrially by brands such as Maille and Amora, and most of the seed is imported, mainly from Canada. The Amora factory in Dijon has closed, but shops in the centre still sell mustards in unusual flavours, often in painted faience pots.

The other local signature is crème de cassis, a blackcurrant liqueur, mixed with white wine — traditionally Bourgogne Aligoté — to make a kir, or with champagne for a kir royal. Pain d'épices, a honey gingerbread, is another Dijon speciality. Restaurants serve the Burgundian classics: bœuf bourguignon, beef braised in red wine; escargots de Bourgogne, snails baked in their shells with parsley butter; jambon persillé, a marbled ham with parsley; and gougères, savoury choux pastries made with cheese.

The covered market, Les Halles, built between 1873 and 1875, is the centre of the food trade in the old town, with many bistros in the surrounding lanes. Wine comes from the slopes just south of the city, where famous villages such as Gevrey-Chambertin and Vosne-Romanée are a short drive from the centre, and the city's university has a well-known institute of oenology.