The Antique Dealers' Quarter

Maison Oyat

Eighty metres of half-timbered houses and antique shopfronts, glassmakers to vintage decor.

You're standing in eighty metres of Dijon's 15th century. The upper storeys over these shopfronts lean out over the pavement, and the ground floors are still open arcades, the same shape they had when glassmakers worked behind them. That trade gave the street its name. Before that it was the pig market, then rue du Sargis, then rue des Tondeurs, after the cloth shearers.

The carved details above the beams look medieval, and most of them went up in the 20th century. At number 2, Maison Oyat opened in 2021 and sells vintage furniture, home decoration, pots and planters, traditional brushes, household linen and work by local makers. Famille Porro Antiquités, at number 16, has been dealing since 1979 in 19th-century paintings, objects and furniture, and opens Tuesday to Saturday. Dealers in this quarter often close on Sundays, Mondays and over lunch, so the windows do more work than the doors.

One detour earns the minute: the courtyard of the Hôtel de Vogüé opens off rue de la Chouette just west of here, free in the daytime.

Hôtel de Noident

A merchant's town house of about 1400, its stone mullions still in place.

Rue Vannerie curves, and the curve is medieval: the lane was cut around whatever stood in its way. Its name comes from the vanniers, the basket-makers who worked here. The Hôtel de Noident, at numbers 30 and 32, went up at the very start of the 15th century for Jehan de Noident, châtelain of Saint-Seine-sur-Vingeanne. A châtelain held a castle in the country and kept a house in town, and this one was his.

Look up at the windows: the stone mullions are still there, the vertical bars that divide each opening, six hundred years after they were set in place. The mansion is listed as a monument historique and has been private for most of its life, which is why the front stays plain and the door gives nothing away. Next door the line of the lane breaks at 32 bis and 32 ter, and that gap has its own story, told on the way to the next stop. The even side of this street has barely changed in two hundred years.

Maison des Cariatides

A cauldron-maker's Renaissance house of about 1603, caryatids and all.

The street is named for what was made in it. Chaudronnerie means cauldron-making, and the cauldron-makers here earned enough to build in stone. Around 1603 the Pouffier family put up this house at number 28 and carved into its front the caryatids that gave it its name. A restaurant occupies it now, so look at the upper storeys.

The change of material is what makes the house worth a stop. Rue Verrerie is timber, painted and overhanging; this front is cut stone, with regular openings and a proper architectural order, the mark of a family that could pay a mason and wanted the neighbours to know it. That ambition is very Dijon. The trades that made money here in the 16th century built in stone, the way the nobility did.

Rue Auguste-Comte, the lane you climbed on the way here, holds the galleries and the dealers: Galerie 6 and Fouchet at numbers 6 and 19, and a brocante on the third Sunday of the month. Cauldrons, glass, baskets: every lane here carries a trade in its name.