Hotel - Dieu, Beaune

Recently I posted a photo of a storm cloud taken during a holiday in Burgundy in 2004 and today I am revisiting my pictures from that trip with a few shots of the Hotel Dieu in the city of Beaune.

Before I get to that however I want to share something that was a real surprise when we arrived at the gite.  The owner warned us against opening the window in one of the bedrooms and so of course we had to have a look, and pulling back the curtains we found a colony of bees building a nest between the window and the shutters.  It was fascinating watching the constant activity.  

Needless to say we didn't open the window.

So the Hotel-Dieu...This was a magnificent building in the medieval city of Beaune, it was a hospice founded in 1443 to provide for the local population which was suffering poverty and famine.  The interior of the building is beautiful and spacious, in the great hall of the poor the walls are lined with 28 four poster beds for the patients.

The rooftops overlooking the interior courtyard as you can see from the pictures below are decorated in geometric patterns with colourful glazed tiles for the benefit of the patients.  By contrast the rooftops which can be seen from the exterior of the building are plain grey tiles giving nothing away and thus not drawing the attention of passing strangers.

I used my Konika compact camera to take these pictures and would love to go back in the future to take some high resolution shots to really bring out the colours in the tiles.  For now though, these will have to do.