The Hôtel-Dieu of Beaune

One of the rarest and most superb buildings in France, which seems rather the abode of a prince than a hospital for the poor.' Thus, in the early seventeenth century, the clerical scholar Fodere characterised the fifteenth-century hospital (Hôtel-Dieu ) at Beaune, which remains today one of the finest monuments of the high period of Burgundian power in Europe. From the earliest days of its existence, in fact, there was an evident and striking contrast between the paupers who were the institution's normal residents, and their environment, the beauty and sumptuousness of which were to cause Viollet-le-Duc, the nineteenth-century champion of French Gothic, to sigh that it would almost be a pleasure to fall sick in Beaune.