2 Best Sights in Burgundy, France

This charmingly turreted 16th-to-17th-century mansion contains two museums: the Musée de la Renaissance en Champagne (Regional Art Museum) and the Musée de la Maille (Textile-Hosiery Museum). The former traces the development of Troyes and southern Champagne, with a particularly rich selection of religious sculptures and paintings of the late Gothic era; the latter outlines the history and manufacturing procedures of the town's textile industry in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The ancient theater, sitting at the edge of Autun on the road to Chalon-sur-Saône, makes an atmospheric picnic spot. Select lunch fixings in town, and then settle in on the stepped seats, where as many as 15,000 Gallo-Roman spectators perched two millennia ago. On Friday and Saturday nights in the height of summer, a themed performance—the only one of its kind—is put on by locals wearing period costumes. Elsewhere on the outskirts of town are the remains of a Roman Temple of Janus.