The story
Step into the courtyard of the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune and the first thing you see is the roof, steep and patterned in glazed tiles of red, brown, yellow and green. The tiles there today were renewed between 1902 and 1907. The hospital beneath them was founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, and his wife Guigone de Salins, and it went on caring for patients until 1971.
Its heart is the Great Hall of the Poor, 50 metres long, lined with curtained beds that each once held two patients, with the chapel at the far end so the sick could follow Mass. For that chapel Rolin commissioned a Last Judgment from Rogier van der Weyden, the city painter of Brussels, and it was ready by 1451.
The altarpiece now has a darkened room of its own, its panels opened out across more than five metres. Christ sits in judgment while the archangel Michael weighs souls, and on the outer wings Rolin and Guigone kneel in prayer. A motorised magnifying glass lets visitors follow the faces up close. In later centuries the nudes were given painted-on clothes, which came off only in a restoration of 1875 to 1878.
The Hospices still owns about 60 hectares of vineyards, and since 1859 their wine has been sold at a charity auction every November.
