4 Best Sights in Burgundy, France

Built from Sebastiano Serlio's designs, with interior blandishments by Primaticcio, the Château d'Ancy-le-Franc is an important example of Italianism, less for its plain, heavy exterior than for its sumptuous rooms and apartments, many with carved or painted walls and ceilings plus original furnishings. Niccolò dell'Abate and other court artists created the magnificent Chambre des Arts (Art Gallery) and other rooms filled with murals depicting the signs of the zodiac, the Battle of Pharsala, and the motif of Diana in Her Bath (much favored by Diane de Poitiers, sister of the Comtesse de Tonnerre). Such grandeur won the approval of no less than the Sun King, Louis XIV, who once stayed in the Salon Bleu (Blue Room). The east wing of the ground floor, which housed Diane de Poitier's apartments, has been restored. Highlights here include Diane's bedroom with its 16th-century murals.

Unlike most aristocrats who heeded the royal summons to live at Versailles and fled the countryside, the marquis and marquise de Tanlay opted to live here among their village retainers. As a result, the Château de Tanlay, built around 1550, never fell into neglect and is a masterpiece of early French Baroque. Spectacularly adorned with rusticated obelisks, pagoda-like towers, the finest in French Classicist ornamentation, and a "grand canal," the château is centered around a typical cour d'honneur. Inside, the Hall of Caesars vestibule, framed by wrought-iron railings, leads to a wood-panel salon and dining room filled with period furniture. A graceful staircase climbs to the second floor, which has the showstopper: a gigantic gallery frescoed in Italianate trompe-l'oeil. A small room in the tower above was used as a secret meeting place by Huguenot Protestants during the 1562–98 Wars of Religion; note the cupola with its fresco of scantily clad 16th-century religious personalities. Visits are by guided tour only, which depart daily at 10:10 am, 11:15 am, 2:15 pm, 3:15 pm, 4:15 pm, and 5:15 pm.

The elegant, classical exterior of this former palace can best be admired from half-moon Place de la Libération and the cour d'honneur. The kitchens (circa 1450), with their six huge fireplaces and (for their time) state-of-the-art aeration funnel in the ceiling, catch the eye, as does the 15th-century Salle des Gardes (Guard Room), with its richly carved and colored tombs and late-14th-century altarpieces. The palace now houses one of France's major art museums, the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts Museum). The magnificent tombs sculpted for dukes Philip the Bold and his son John the Fearless (note their dramatically moving mourners, hidden in shrouds) are just two highlights of a rich collection of medieval objects and Renaissance furniture gathered here as testimony to Marguerite of Flanders (Philip the Bold's wife). She brought to Burgundy not only her dowry, namely the rich province of Flanders, but also a host of distinguished artists—including Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, and Claus Sluter. Their artistic legacy can be seen here, as well as at several of Burgundy's other museums and monuments. Among the paintings are works by Italian old masters and French 19th-century artists, such as Théodore Géricault and Gustave Courbet, plus their Impressionist successors, notably Édouard Manet and Claude Monet.

"The Fontainebleau of Burgundy" was how Madame de Sévigné described this turreted Renaissance château with its Italianate inner court. Originally constructed by the de Rabutin family and once owned by Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes—an instigator of the 1572 St-Bartholomew's Day Massacre, during which mobs attacked Huguenots in and around Paris—the château was partly reconstructed in elegant Régence style in the 18th century. Maurice de MacMahon, Napoléon III’s field marshal, was born here in 1808; he went on to serve as the president of France’s Third Republic from 1873 to 1879.