Collégiale Notre-Dame de Beaune, sa Vierge et la tenture de la Vie de la Vierge

Beaune

A stone's throw from the Hospices, Notre-Dame de Beaune is one of the last great Romanesque churches of Burgundy, a "daughter of Cluny" begun in the middle of the 12th century on the model of the great abbey church now lost, and completed with remarkable unity in the early 13th. Through the Gothic porch, one enters a nave that distils five centuries of Beaune's devotion to Mary. In the choir sits the figure that has drawn everything to itself: Notre-Dame de Beaune, a 12th-century Virgin in Majesty, seated, stiff and hieratic, presenting the Child — one of those dark Romanesque Virgins that local tradition counts among the Black Madonnas, and to whom the people of Beaune have turned through plagues, wars and uncertain vintages. Around her the church displays its most famous treasure: the tapestry cycle of the Life of the Virgin, a series of wool and silk tapestries given around 1500, which unfolds in nineteen scenes teeming with detail the whole life of Mary, from her birth to her coronation. Restored in 1852 by the sisters of the Hôtel-Dieu, they rank among the finest late-medieval weavings preserved in France. The visit is rounded off by the 15th-century wall paintings and the Renaissance chapel, before one steps back out into the wine-growers' lanes. A discreet high place, in the shadow of the all-too-famous Hospices, where for centuries the most refined art was placed in the service of a single figure: the Lady of Beaune. The Hôtel-Dieu, three hundred metres away, has its own entry.

Getting there : Place Général Leclerc, centre of Beaune. Church open all year (active place of worship); tapestries on view from April to October at reduced hours, outside ceremonies. Coordinates given for the collegiate church.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound