Burgundy & Franche-Comté

Before Rome, the Aedui ruled much of Burgundy from their hill-town of Bibracte, on Mont Beuvray in the Morvan, and it was at Alesia, in the Côte-d'Or, that Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix in 52 BC. Autun grew into a Roman city, and in the 5th century a Germanic people, the Burgundians, settled here and gave the region its name. In the Middle Ages Burgundy became the heart of Western monasticism: the abbey of Cluny, founded in 910, led hundreds of daughter houses, and Cîteaux, from 1098, gave birth to the Cistercian order. At Vézelay, Bernard of Clairvaux preached the Second Crusade in 1146.

The Valois Dukes of Burgundy, from Philip the Bold in 1363 to Charles the Bold, who died in battle at Nancy in 1477, built a state stretching to Flanders and ran one of Europe's most brilliant courts from Dijon. After Charles's death Louis XI took the duchy for France. Franche-Comté, the "free county" of Burgundy, passed instead to the Habsburgs and was ruled from Spain until Louis XIV conquered it; it became French in 1678, and Vauban fortified Besançon.

Industry arrived in the 19th century: Schneider's steel at Le Creusot, Peugeot's factories around Montbéliard and Sochaux, and watchmaking in Besançon and the Jura uplands. Belfort held out through a long siege in 1870–71 and remained French. The two regions were merged in 2016, with Dijon as capital.

The two halves have different characters. Burgundy is wine country with an old aristocratic and monastic culture, and its identity is bound up with the vineyard calendar: the Saint-Vincent Tournante in January, when a different village hosts a winter wine festival each year, the dinners of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin at the Clos de Vougeot, and the Hospices de Beaune charity auction in November. Growers talk of climats, individual named plots whose boundaries go back centuries.

Franche-Comté is more upland, practical and reserved, formed by forests, dairy farming and small-scale industry. The Comté cheese cooperatives, known as fruitières, where farmers pool their milk, are a shared local institution, and the Jura has long traditions of craft manufacturing — clocks at Morez, pipes at Saint-Claude, toys at Moirans-en-Montagne. The Pays de Montbéliard, which belonged to Württemberg until 1793, is historically Lutheran, unlike the rest of the largely Catholic region.

The region claims some famous natives: Victor Hugo and the Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, Louis Pasteur in Dole, and Gustave Courbet in Ornans, whose landscapes he painted. Nicéphore Niépce made one of the earliest surviving photographs at his home near Chalon-sur-Saône in the 1820s.

About 2.8 million people live in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, one of the less densely populated regions of France. Dijon, with around 160,000 people, is the capital and largest city; Besançon has about 120,000, and the other towns — Chalon-sur-Saône, Auxerre, Nevers, Mâcon, Belfort, Montbéliard, Dole — are much smaller. Large areas such as the Nièvre, the Morvan and the Haute-Saône are rural and losing population.

The economy combines wine, cattle and cereals with industry. The Charolais cattle breed takes its name from the Charolles area, and the white cows fill the fields of Saône-et-Loire and the Nièvre. The Peugeot plant at Sochaux, the Alstom works at Belfort and precision engineering and watch-related firms in the Doubs are major employers, and many Jura residents cross daily to better-paid jobs in Switzerland, which pushes up house prices near the border.

Life follows a steady, provincial rhythm: markets on set mornings, lunch as the main meal, and shops closed on Sundays. In the wine villages the year revolves around pruning, flowering and the harvest, and in the Jura around the winter snow.

Burgundy's cooking is based on wine, beef and cream. Bœuf bourguignon is beef braised in red wine with bacon, onions and mushrooms; coq au vin is cockerel cooked the same way; and œufs en meurette are eggs poached in a red-wine sauce. Escargots de Bourgogne are snails baked in garlic and parsley butter, jambon persillé is ham set in a parsley jelly, and gougères are small cheese choux puffs served with wine. Dijon gives its name to a strong mustard and makes pain d'épices, a honey spice bread. The strong-smelling Époisses is a washed-rind cheese, and blackcurrants become crème de cassis, the liqueur used in a kir.

Franche-Comté eats from the mountains. Comté is a hard cow's-milk cheese matured for months, Morbier has a line of ash through its centre, and Mont d'Or is a soft winter cheese in a spruce box, often baked whole. Cancoillotte is a runny, mild cheese spread, and the smoked saucisse de Morteau is a local sausage.

The wines are world-famous: Chablis in the Yonne; the red Pinot Noirs and white Chardonnays of the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune; and Pouilly-Fuissé in the Mâconnais. The Jura makes vin jaune, a sherry-like white aged under a veil of yeast, and sweet vin de paille, and Pontarlier is historically associated with absinthe.

Dijon has the Palace of the Dukes, which houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the dukes' tombs, the church of Notre-Dame with its little owl carving touched for luck, and a lively covered market. South of the city, the Côte d'Or vineyards run through villages such as Gevrey-Chambertin, Vougeot, with its château, and Nuits-Saint-Georges, to Beaune, where the Hôtel-Dieu of the Hospices de Beaune shows off its glazed-tile roof, and on to Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet.

In northern Burgundy, Vézelay's basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine sits on its hill, the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the medieval-style castle of Guédelon is being built by hand using 13th-century techniques. Further south stand the remains of Cluny's abbey, Autun's Romanesque cathedral, and the forests and lakes of the Morvan regional park.

In Franche-Comté, Besançon's citadel looks down on a loop of the Doubs, and the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, a UNESCO site, show 18th-century industrial architecture. Nearby, Ornans and the Loue valley offer river scenery. The Jura mountains contain the Hérisson waterfalls, the village of Baume-les-Messieurs under limestone cliffs, the Lac de Vouglans, the Château de Joux and ski areas around Métabief and Les Rousses. Belfort has Bartholdi's red sandstone lion set against the cliff below its fortress, and Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp is nearby.