A Little Dijon on the Side

My goal, however was not to look at the Rubens here or the Manet there. At the end of a long hallway, I found the room I was looking for -- the Salle des Gardes, dominated by its great Gothic fireplace and a pair of large, elaborate tombs of Burgundy's first two Valois dukes. At the far end of the room is the tomb of the first duke, Philip the Bold; closer to the entry is the tomb for Philip's son, John the Fearless, and John's wife, Marguerite.

The tombs -- each constructed over decades in black and white painted marble and alabaster -- are interesting not as morbid curiosities but as great works of art and testaments to human patience and fanatical detail.

The likenesses of the three royals were sculpted -- larger than life -- in the same pose: eyes open and looking heavenward, hands held together in a position of prayer and feet resting on reposing lions. The true mastery is in the sides of the tombs, where dozens of small statuettes depict a cortege of funeral mourners.

Seeing these figures, so meticulously rendered with heavy draped and creased robes sculpted to show natural gravity, so much else suddenly seems small --the Eiffel Tower, for example, or the artistry involved in the making of Epoisses.

I was eager to see another interesting feature of the palace: its 15th-century kitchens. At the museum entrance, however, a security guard informed me that the kitchens were closed. (You can generally see them only by taking a palace tour, organized by the tourism office on weekends.)

I would be leaving in the morning, so I asked a museum guard patiently in French if I could take just "a little look."

If this had been any major world capital, I am sure I would have received an icy no. Persistence might have ended in my trying on a pair of handcuffs.

But this was Dijon. The guard pointed through the museum's glass door at a wood door across the courtyard. "See that door?" he said quietly in French. "Why don't you try it and see if it's open?"

I did, and it opened.

I walked into a large square Gothic room about 40 feet on each side. Inside were a series of columns that fed into one central vaulted ceiling with a hole at the apex -- providing ventilation for what were once six fireplaces, each large enough to roast a steer.

The smooth light-stone room was today serving another purpose. I noticed people rushing about setting up for some sort of conference or reception. There were tables and rows of chairs, a large projection screen, cameras and computers. Off to the side, tables were being set with wineglasses. In just minutes, I learned by asking someone in a suit, a national meeting of a French professional basketball league would be starting.

Emboldened, I tried another door of the palace that was "closed" to the public and ended up walking alone through the regal corridors, staircases and rooms created for the governors of Burgundy after a 17th-century decree by Louis XIV.

I encountered a couple of workmen changing bulbs and looking busy. No one asked me to leave.

The Mustard Story

I could not leave town without visiting Dijon's mustard museum. How, after all, does a place become the world capital of mustard? And, heck, what exactly is mustard? My curiosity was aroused.

The mustard museum is actually in the Amora-Maille plant on the outskirts of Dijon. In an hour-long bilingual tour, I learned about the beginnings of mustard in antiquity and its glory in Renaissance Burgundy (thanks to an abundance of mustard plants and the availability of a certain white grape juice used in the original recipe.) I learned about familiar names such as Grey and Poupon.

It's a great story, up until the point where the giant conglomerates gobble up most of the world's mustard production. I learned that Maille, which makes tons of the stuff every year in Dijon, is now a division of Unilever and that its mustard grains are all grown in Canada. Even sadder, the prominent "Dijon mustard" in the United States, Grey Poupon, never sees the cloudy skies of Dijon. It's made at the Kraft Foods plant in Upper Macungie Township, Pa.

I wondered what Burgundy's great dukes would think of that. Probably that the world has gotten a lot smaller in the last 600 years.

Robert V. Camuto last wrote for Travel about Paris with kids.