One of the oldest museums in France, home to the tombs of the Valois dukes of Burgundy.
€120one way from Beaune with a private driver
Private driver from Beaune: 44 min by road (48 km), €120 one way for the whole car.
Or add it to our full-day wine tour, €560.
Coming by train or plane? Transfers from stations and airports →
Dijon's Fine Arts Museum occupies part of the ducal palace and is one of the oldest and richest museums in France. Its permanent collections are free. The highlight is the dukes' great hall, where the tombs of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless stand surrounded by their famous alabaster mourners.
Start in the Salle des Gardes, the dukes' banqueting hall with its monumental fireplace, where the two tombs stand. Walk slowly around them to study the mourners, each hooded figure different. Nearby are the gilded altarpieces carved by Jacques de Baerze and painted by Melchior Broederlam for Champmol. The route then runs from Italian and Flemish painting to a marble polar bear by François Pompon and modern works. The vaulted ducal kitchens of the 1430s are part of the visit.
The museum grew out of a free drawing school founded in the 1760s at the suggestion of the sculptor François Devosge. The Estates of Burgundy built an east wing of the palace for the school and its models, and the collections opened to the public in 1799. Between 1804 and 1812 the state sent 72 paintings from the central museum of the arts in Paris, the future Louvre.
The ducal tombs came from the Chartreuse de Champmol, the monastery Philip the Bold founded outside Dijon as his family's burial place. Damaged during the Revolution, they were restored and installed in the palace's great hall in 1827. Philip the Bold's tomb was begun by Jean de Marville, taken up by Claus Sluter and finished by Claus de Werve around 1410. The tomb of John the Fearless and Margaret of Bavaria followed between 1443 and 1470.
A long renovation began in 2006. The Middle Ages and Renaissance galleries reopened in 2013, and the whole museum reopened in May 2019, with about 1,500 works shown in 50 rooms. The collections now number more than 140,000 works, from ancient Egypt to contemporary art, including the large Granville donation of modern paintings. Attendance soared after the reopening, reaching about 315,000 visitors in 2019.
Only the temporary exhibitions are charged, €9 or €5 at the reduced rate.
Checked on on the official site.
Entry to the permanent collections is free, and only temporary exhibitions are charged. The museum is closed on Tuesdays. A free app, Nomade, offers themed routes. Allow about an hour for the ducal rooms and three hours or more for the whole museum.
What to combine with Dijon Fine Arts Museum on the same day, nearest first.
Dijon Fine Arts Museum is about 44 min from Beaune by road (48 km). With a private driver, the trip from Beaune starts at €120 for the whole car, up to 4 guests.
Did you know? In 1945 one of the ten 19th-century replacement mourners was traded to an English collector for a medieval one. It returned to the museum as a gift in 2025, completing the set.
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€120 one way from Beaune · up to 4 guests
