By Robert V. Camuto
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 17, 2006

As my train glided into Dijon, a dark, gray blanket of clouds covered the city and a light, cold rain began to fall.

The woman sitting across the aisle from me -- an elegant grandmother from southern France en route to see her grandchildren -- looked out the window and sighed.

"Is there never sun in Dijon?" she asked no one in particular in French. After all, when the train had pulled out of Marseille a few hours earlier, the sky was a radiant blue and there was not a hint of humidity in the air. She looked at me and shook her head, answering her own question: "I have never seen it."

I had come to Dijon -- or I should say, through it -- on my way to explore Burgundy and its mythic wine country of tiny villages that starts at Dijon's back door. This was my first trip to this intriguing, distinctly northern-facing city in eastern France, and during my stay of less than 48 hours, I never saw the sun either.

I did, however, discover many of the profound charms Dijon has to offer. Like culture: This city of Gothic churches, palatial splendor and medieval timbered villas has a long, rich history dating to the glory days of the medieval Dukes of Burgundy. I walked from one end to the other on its beautiful pedestrian stone streets with cafes and tearooms animated by the energy of some 33,000 students. And I ate superbly well, getting the royal treatment in restaurants that offer up one of France's finest cuisines at prices that would be unimaginable in Paris or the sunny southern coast from where we had come.

I also learned more about mustard in general -- and Dijon mustard in particular -- than I'd ever imagined there was to know.

Visiting Dijon in the off season (late fall and winter, when there's even less sunlight than usual), at times I had the feeling that I had some of the city's treasures to myself. Which, in fact, I did.

My first stop, after dropping my bags at the hotel and borrowing one of the big multicolored umbrellas on loan to guests (with 158 days of rainfall per year, they were prepared), was the heart of old Dijon and the old Palace of the Dukes.

Dijon is built around this seat of power, and most roads lead here -- making it almost impossible to get lost. I walked through the covered market, through streets with medieval half-timbered houses and the Place Francois Rude, where a century-old fountain is topped by a bronze statue of a nude grape-stomping winemaker know as the Bareuzai (a Burgundian expression referring to the pink-stocking effect winemakers got from going knee-deep in pinot noir.)

The one important bit of history one need know about Dijon is that for 113 years that ended in 1477, it was the seat of power for one of the most powerful states in Europe -- presided over by the Valois dukes, whose lands stretched through present-day Belgium and the Netherlands. Which explains why Dijon often resembles Belgium or a city of central Europe more than it does France.

What is today the Palace of the Dukes and States-General of Burgundy is a complex of buildings and towers built over centuries, todaty housing a museum and City Hall.

My goal that afternoon was to climb the famed 150-foot Tower of Philip the Good -- built as a lookout by the duke who spited France by turning Joan of Arc over to his pal, Henry V of England.

It turned out I was the only visitor for the last tour of the day. The guide -- young and somewhat bored -- led me through a door, and up we climbed 316 steps on a tightly spiraling staircase before arriving on a terrace that looked out in all directions over the city.

The rain had stopped temporarily, and from this vantage I could take in many of the details that give Dijon its distinctive feel -- the Flemish-style roof patterns made from brightly colored ceramic tiles, the Gothic church steeples, and the ornate gargoyles and towers of the 13th-century Notre Dame Cathedral.

Dijon is still known as the city of 100 church bell towers, which in this day is more than a slight exaggeration. The French Revolution, after all, helped greatly reduce the number of church spires. I asked the guide about how many were left. "Treize," he said, suppressing a yawn. Thirteen.

Dijon's most famous ringing tower was in full view -- the landmark clock known as Jacquemart atop Notre Dame. Originally a 14th-century war spoil from Kortrijk (Belgium), the pipe-smoking Jacquemart character in his floppy hat was given a bride, Jacqueline, to join him in the 17th century. When the clock failed to strike in the early 18th century, a poet warned that this was a bad sign for the couple. People began to talk. A son, Jacquelinet, was added to strike the half-hours, and in the 19th, a daughter, Jacquelinette, was made to strike the quarter-hours.

It was becoming clear to me that Dijon may be too big to be a village, but is certainly too provincial and quirky to feel like a city. And that can be a good thing.

That evening I dined at Les Oenophiles, a gastronomic restaurant with stone walls and lamps made from wine presses that is none of the things I expect from fine big-city dining. It was not stuffy, nor pretentious, and certainly wasn't hip. It simply was.

I will cut right to my appetizer -- a typically Burgundian dish of parslied ham. The waiter placed the plate down, filled my glass from a half-bottle of red Burgundy, then said in French without a hint of attitude, "Monsieur, I would like to wish you an excellent appétit ." And then he disappeared.

We all have our restaurant service stories peopled with servers the world over who are obnoxious, overly attentive, too familiar or too whatever. In my experience, outside of France's major cities and A-list tourist destinations, there remains in the country a level of restaurant professionalism unparalleled in the Western world. In Dijon and Burgundy in general and in Les Oenophiles in particular, I found examples of what service should be.

The main course was another Burgundian specialty -- beef cheeks in an almost black wine sauce. It came to the table covered with one of those silver service domes. A different waiter lifted the dome and, voila , stood back as the steam and aromas drifted upward. He wished me a bonne continuation . (" Excellente continuation" would have probably been a bit too much.)

This course was followed by my selection of cheeses from an ample cart that ended in Epoisses , Burgundy's legendary stinky cheese. Epoisses is a soft-centered cheese usually made from cow's milk with a rind washed in marc, the French equivalent of grappa. American foodies go crazy for it -- probably because the real stuff is unpasteurized and hence banned from import to the United States. I have lived in France five years, and this was my first Epoisses experience. This particular example lived up to its rep, smelling and tasting as it did like one very old, wet coat.

As luck would have it, by the time I was ready to leave from dinner, the rain had stopped. For whatever reason -- the bliss of a fine meal and wine or being nearly smothered by fromage , I left the borrowed umbrella at the restaurant. The upside was that this would give me a perfectly good reason to return.

The next day I headed back to the ducal palace -- the part that houses Dijon's art museum. I marched through many grand halls added to the palace over hundreds of years. They were filled with centuries of painting and sculpture, from Renaissance Italian and Flemish painters to French court painters and impressionists.

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.

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.