Movie theatres, a bookshop, a tasting village, an exhibition on tableware, a functional kitchen for chef demonstrations and a cellar with 3,000 wine references, including 1,000 from Burgundy, which can be drinking by the glass in a restaurant, a brasserie, a campus of the Ferrandi school… Dijon’s City of Gastronomy aims to be an all-out cultural center centered around good food. Presented as a “exceptional place to celebrate the French art of living“, the 1750 m2 establishment, inaugurated on Friday May 6, is located in the former Hospital of the Holy Spirit, an architectural jewel with glazed tiles founded in 1204.
And it will not be the only one since three others will see the light of day by 2024, each with a theme: Lyon (“food and health”), Paris-Rungis (“sustainable food and responsible gastronomy”), Tours (“science human and social”). Dijon, it illustrates the “culture of the vine and wine”.
The work of the City of Gastronomy @dijon enter their home stretch. The installation of the signage and the luminous sign marks a new stage visible from the outside of the finalization of this incredible construction site. pic.twitter.com/a03qByKC3A
— International city of gastronomy and wine (@DijonCIGV) April 22, 2022
On November 16, 2010, Unesco added to the intangible cultural heritage the “French gastronomic meal”. And this International City of Gastronomy and Wine displays an ambition: “They are places of learning, places of knowledge, of discovery, of transmission to future generations of the art of eating well and drinking well in the French way. And knowing basically what Claude Lévi-Strauss was obviously saying: ‘a food is not only good to eat, it must also be good to think about“, specifies Pierre Sanner, director of the French Mission of Heritage and Food Cultures.
This network was born in the wake of the entry of the gastronomic meal of the French to the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, in 2010 at Unesco. In Dijon, 250 million euros, of which 90% by the private sector, have been invested for a City of Gastronomy entirely open to the city and which intends to remain accessible to all audiences, with a price of 13 euros for a discovery visit .