Beaune

Below the streets, the wine is sleeping. Limestone cellars stretch under the old town in silence, thousands of bottles ageing in cool darkness while above them the Hospices de Beaune glows in polychrome tile — glazed diamonds of green, gold, red, and brown that catch every shift in the Burgundy sky. Beaune in France is a town that revolves around a single obsession, and the obsession is total.

Beaune sits at the heart of the Côte d'Or, the narrow limestone escarpment that produces Burgundy's most celebrated wines. The Hospices de Beaune, founded in 1443 as a charitable hospital by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, features a courtyard of polychrome-tiled roofs in geometric patterns that have become the symbol of the region. The Hospices' annual wine auction, held on the third Sunday of November, sets the benchmark price for each Burgundy vintage and draws buyers from around the world. Underground cellars beneath the town — many dating from the 13th century — store millions of bottles in conditions maintained naturally by the limestone at a constant 12°C. The Route des Grands Crus, running north from Beaune through Pommard, Volnay, and Nuits-Saint-Georges, passes vineyards where individual plots sell for more per hectare than any agricultural land on earth.