Packing List for Beaune, France: What Women Should Bring

Photograph: Hospices de Beaune, the roof by Jebulon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Beaune is a town of 20,352 people in the Cote-d'Or, widely considered the wine capital of Burgundy, sitting between Lyon and Dijon on a plain at the foot of the hills. It is a walled city, with much of the battlements, ramparts and moat surviving in good condition and an extensive old town inside them, surrounded by some of the world's most famous wine villages. Its vineyards were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2015, with the historic centre of Dijon, as part of the Climats, terroirs of Burgundy site.

The photograph at the top of this page is the thing you came for, and it faces the wrong way. That is the glazed polychrome roof of the Hospices de Beaune: four colours of tile, red, brown, yellow and green, laid in interlaced designs, with timber-framed dormers and fine ironwork above them. Beaune is the main centre of the region's Burgundian tile roofing style and this is its best example. The practical point is that THE FAMOUS ROOF FACES INWARD. The sources themselves say the courtyard is the best place to admire it, so you see it from inside the paid courtyard and not from the pavement, and looking for it from the street is the commonest way this visit disappoints.

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What Is Here

A charitable almshouse that became the most photographed roof in Burgundy. The Hospices de Beaune, also called the Hotel-Dieu, was founded in the fifteenth century by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, and his wife Guigone de Salins, as a hospital for the poor. The circumstances are worth knowing before you walk in: most of the people of Beaune were destitute and the area had recently suffered an outbreak of plague. It is a pair of two-storey buildings around a stone courtyard, with half-timbered galleries, a gothic ironwork well in the middle and those ornate rooftops, and it is described as one of the finest examples of fifteenth-century Burgundian architecture.

The Room of the Poor is the part that stays with you. It measures 50 metres by 14 by 16, furnished with two rows of curtained beds, each bed able to take two patients, and the floor tiling carries Rolin's monogram and his motto, Seulle estoile, my only star, meaning his wife. The chapel sits at the end of the ward, positioned so that the bedridden could attend Mass from their beds. The Rogier van der Weyden polyptych was painted for that chapel and now hangs in the museum; I am not giving it a title, because my two sources give it two different ones.

It is still a charity and it still works. The Hospices run hospitals and services for the needy, patient care has long since moved into modern buildings, and the institution's own account is that the elderly, the disabled, the sick, orphans, women about to give birth and the destitute have been welcomed uninterruptedly from the Middle Ages until today. The glazed tiles have been renewed over the centuries, as a roof of that kind must be.

The rest of the old town is small, walkable and genuinely pleasant. The landmarks beyond the Hotel-Dieu are the old covered market, les Halles, the Beffroi clock tower and the collegiate church of Notre Dame. Beaune is bound up with the Dukes of Burgundy and succeeded Dijon as capital of the duchy in its glory days, which reverses the two towns' present sizes. There is also a working mustard mill here, in the Fallot family since 1840, twenty minutes by train from the city whose name is on the jar.

The Wine, and the Honest Shape of a Visit

The sources put the shape of a Beaune trip better than I can. For the typical tourist, Beaune is a half-day town: the historic centre is pleasant to walk and the Hotel-Dieu is a must-see that takes about an hour. For the food and wine lover there is not enough time. Both are true at once, and which one applies to you decides whether you book one night or four.

The cellars are in the town and the vineyards are not. The cellars of many producers, large and small, sit in the historic centre itself, as they have since Roman times, so tasting is something you do on foot in the middle of Beaune. Beaune is about halfway along the wine route, with Pommard, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Nuits-Saint-Georges a short drive away, and it sits on the route des Grands Crus running north to Gevrey-Chambertin and south towards Nolay and Autun. Note the oddity the sources point out: Beaune has no Grand cru named after it and is the hub of the region's wine business anyway, because so many of Burgundy's major negociants are here.

Appellations a few kilometres apart taste dramatically different, which is the whole point and also the trap. It is why people spend days here rather than hours, and why a hurried tour of six villages in an afternoon teaches you nothing. The reds are all pinot noir and the whites almost all chardonnay, with Aligote the exception, usually mixed with creme de cassis to make a kir.

The auction is famous and it is not in the building you are standing in. A charity wine auction has been arranged here annually since 1859, on the third Sunday in November, inside a three-day festival of Burgundian food and wine called Les Trois Glorieuses. It was formerly held in the great hall of the Hotel-Dieu and is not held there now. The Hospices own donated vineyard land across Burgundy, much of it Grand and Premier cru, which is how a medieval hospital became a wine producer: centuries of benefactors left it farms, woodland and vines. For the auction weekend, check the current dates rather than trusting any guide including this one, and book a very long way out.

When to Go

There is no dry month, so the rain jacket is the one item you should not leave behind. The normals for Beaune give 752.9 millimetres of rain a year falling on about 115 days, with rain in every single month and wet days running from roughly seven in August to eleven in November and December. Autumn is wettest, November at 80.3 millimetres and October at 76.0, and February is the driest month at 49.2. Summer gets less rain than winter and delivers it in fewer, heavier bursts: July brings more millimetres than February across fewer wet days.

The annual range is wide, which is the real difference between here and the French coast. January averages a high of 5.9C and a low of 0.3C, while July averages 26.8C and August 26.5C, and the record extremes run from 39.8C to minus 20.5C. That is a continental swing rather than a maritime one. May, June and September are the compromise: warm enough to sit outside, cool enough to walk the vineyards.

Harvest and auction season is the atmospheric choice and the expensive one. September and October put the town to work and November puts it on display, and both mean full hotels. Saturday is the fine food market, and the city is very crowded for it.

Getting There

The train is the sensible answer and Dijon is one stop away. Beaune's station is served by TGV via Dijon or Lyon, and local trains from Dijon take about twenty minutes. From Paris a direct regional express from Paris-Bercy takes about three and a half hours, and the TGV from Paris-Lyon to Dijon with a local connection is usually faster at nearer two and a half. Occasional services run straight through. The nearest airports are Dijon and Lyon.

By car it is easy and the motorways meet here. Beaune is on the A6, A31 and A36, about two and a half hours from Paris and forty-five minutes from Lyon. The old centre is compact and ringed by a boulevard following the line of the old walls, with car parks on that ring, and you walk in from there.

A car is required to explore the surrounding wine towns, and that is the one real planning constraint. The villages are not reachable on foot. If you would rather not drive, and the next section explains why you might not, guided bike tours leave Beaune daily and bicycles can be rented locally, which on a flat plain between vineyards is a genuinely good way to do it.

The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in France, and its terrorism wording is the strongest it uses: terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in France, with shopping centres, entertainment venues, sporting events, transport hubs and crowded gatherings named as possible targets. The everyday risks are more specific than that sounds. Pickpocketing is organised on the Paris Metro and on trains, typically in pairs with one person distracting you, and the FCDO records SERIOUS ASSAULTS on RER lines B and D, which matters because line B is the train most visitors take from the airports. Drink spiking is named with the drugs rather than hinted at: be alert to the possible use of date rape drugs including GHB and liquid ecstasy. Strikes and demonstrations happen at short notice and can stop trains and close roads, usually peacefully. And wildfires affect the south in hot dry summers.

Is Beaune Safe for Women Travelers

A prosperous town of twenty thousand people where the real risk is the one you drive into. Beaune is a wealthy, busy, well-kept place and there is no urban safety picture here worth inventing. What there is, and it is specific: a destination whose main activity is drinking, in a region where a car is required to reach the villages. THOSE TWO FACTS TOGETHER ARE THE SAFETY SECTION. Do not drive after tasting, at all. Use a driver, a guided tour, a bicycle or the train, spit at tastings rather than swallowing, and do not try to reason your way to a number, because the French limit is lower than you may be used to and this is not the place to find out where it sits.

The national warnings reach here unevenly, and saying which do not matters as much. The FCDO's advice about serious assaults on RER lines B and D is about the Paris suburban network and does not touch a Burgundian market town; read it if your trip includes Paris. The pickpocketing warning does reach Beaune, in one place and at one time, because a crowded Saturday market in a compact old town is exactly the environment it describes. The drink-spiking warning is national and worth reading twice in a town where you will be drinking in the afternoon with strangers in cellars: keep your glass with you, pour your own where you can, and leave with the people you arrived with.

The Beaune Packing List

Plan for rain in any month, a wide temperature swing between seasons, and the one problem nobody packs for, which is going underground.

Layers, because of the cellars

The layering problem in a wine town is not the weather, it is the cellar: you walk out of a 26C August street into a stone cellar under the town and stand still in it for half an hour. Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women handles both ends of that, because wool holds its warmth when you stop moving and does not feel clammy when you come back up into the heat. Add a fleece mid-layer, which earns its place twice: underground in August, and on a January afternoon when the average high is 5.9C.

The rain jacket is not optional

There is no dry month in Beaune, and roughly seven to eleven days in every month see at least a millimetre of rain. A packable rain jacket that lives in your bag is the right answer rather than an umbrella, because the old town is narrow and the vineyard paths are open. If you are coming between November and February, add a merino beanie: the January average low is 0.3C and the record low on this plain is minus 20.5C, which is a continental winter rather than a mild French one.

Footwear for cobbles and vineyard tracks

Two surfaces, and a smooth sole fails on both. The old town inside the walls is paved and uneven, and the vineyard roads between villages are gravel and dirt that turn greasy after rain. A waterproof hiking shoes with real grip with merino hiking socks covers the town, the tracks and a day on a bicycle. Two things we cannot link: SUNSCREEN, because our registry carries no sunscreen entry at all and a July afternoon between rows of vines has no shade; and a small DAYPACK, where the only entry we hold is marked verification pending, so buy your own rather than take a recommendation from us.

Recommended Tours and Experiences

Essential Resources for Women at Beaune

Emergency numbers. In France, 112 reaches any emergency service from any phone, 15 is the medical emergency number and 17 is the police. Beaune is a sub-prefecture town with its own hospital, so care here does not mean a long drive, which is not true of the villages.

France is in the EU, so a UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care on the same terms as a resident, which means you pay the same patient share a French resident pays rather than nothing. That is not the same as free and it does not cover repatriation, so travel insurance sits on top of it. French hospitals are excellent and a pharmacie, marked by a green cross, handles minor problems without an appointment and will tell you where the duty pharmacy is out of hours. Tap water is drinkable everywhere. Dial 15 for a medical emergency or 112 for anything.

Medical care in the villages is the thing to think about rather than care in town. Beaune has a hospital and pharmacies and is the service centre for the whole Cote de Beaune. The villages around it are small and the roads between them are narrow and unlit at night. A pharmacie, marked with a green cross, will name the duty pharmacy out of hours.

US State Department travel advisory: the France advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.

UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/france, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.

Official health authority: Sante publique France, the national public health agency.

US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Paris.

Official tourism authority: Atout France, the national tourism body. with the Beaune tourist office the practical authority for the Hotel-Dieu, the market days, the cellar visits and the auction weekend arrangements.

Solo women travellers. Beaune is among the more straightforward destinations in this library to visit alone. It is prosperous and compact, the old town is easy on foot, the attraction that brings everyone here is a museum, and tasting rooms are staffed commercial premises where a woman on her own is unremarkable. The honest cautions are the ones above: do not drive after tasting, watch your glass and your bag in a crowded market, and arrange transport out to the villages before you have had anything to drink rather than after.

Takeaways

A walled town of twenty thousand people that is the business capital of Burgundian wine, with a fifteenth-century almshouse at its centre and a patterned roof that faces inward, so you see it from the courtyard rather than the street. Half a day for the Hotel-Dieu and the old town, several days if you care what is in the cellars. Pack a rain jacket whatever the month and a fleece for going underground. A car is required for the villages, which is exactly why you should not be driving one after tasting: take the bike, the train or a driver.

Reading On

Dijon is one stop and twenty minutes up the line, the bigger city and the present capital of Burgundy, and its historic centre is inscribed in the same UNESCO site as these vineyards, so the two posts are the obvious pair. Lyon is forty-five minutes south by motorway and is the region's food city and nearest major airport, and Paris is two and a half hours away. For the other French wine town in this library with a comparable rhythm of tasting rooms and patterned roofs, the Colmar packing list covers the Alsace wine route, and Annecy covers the Alps east of here. For the country, the France packing list and the France travel guide for women carry the regions, the costs and the wildfire geography of the south in full. For why one wool layer handles a hot street and a cold cellar in the same hour, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women.

If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.