Beaune

The commercial capital of Burgundy wine, a prosperous medieval city whose ramparts enclose Renaissance hôtels particuliers and the Hôtel-Dieu — a fifteenth-century charity hospital famous for its polychrome glazed tile roof and Gothic ward. The surrounding vineyards of the Côte de Beaune begin immediately outside the city walls, and the cave cellars beneath the city's wine houses store decades of vintages. The annual Hospices de Beaune wine auction in November is the world's oldest charitable wine sale.