Burgundy, with Dijon

Burgundy, with Dijon Travel Guide

Farms, pastures, and fall foliage make Burgundy enticingly, romantically rural. But it's also evident that whether building, ruling, worshiping, dining, or drinking, Burgundians have never embraced life on anything less than a grand scale.

From magnificent palaces like the one in the city of Dijon and châteaux like the one at Tanlay, dukes more powerful than kings once ruled vast tracts of Western Europe. They left behind mighty medieval cathedrals in Sens and Auxerre, and religious orders built the other Burgundian architectural masterpieces -- the Romanesque basilica at Vézelay and even more impressive abbeys, such as the Abbaye de Cluny, the largest church in the world until the construction of St. Peter's in Rome.