Dijon - Notre-Dame

Dijon, today a city with a population of about 150.000, was a Roman settlement named Divio, located on the road from Lyon to Paris. Saint Benignus, the city's patron saint, is said to have introduced Christianity to the area before being martyred.
The province was home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th centuries, and Dijon was a place of wealth and power.

In 1513, Swiss and Imperial armies invaded Burgundy and besieged Dijon. The siege was extremely violent, but after long negotiations, Louis II de la Trémoille managed to persuade the armies to withdraw. During the siege, the population called on the Virgin Mary for help and saw the withdrawal of the invaders as a miracle. For those reasons, in the years following the siege the inhabitants began to venerate Notre-Dame de Bon-Espoir (Our Lady of Good Hope).

Before the second half of the 12th century, the site of today's Notre-Dame was occupied by a simple chapel, which was outside the city walls. Beginning around 1220 the erection of the Gothic church of today started.
Sunset in Dijon.

Note Notre Dame´s clock with its jacquemart.

It has four automatons. Two of them, called Jacquemart and Jacqueline, sound the hours by striking a large bell with a hammer. The other two, their "children", Jacquelinet and Jacquelinette, strike the quarter hours, each on a small bell.

The Jacquemart was brought from Kortrijk in Belgium, after the looting of the town by the armies of Philip the Bold in 1382.

At that time, only the male figure existed. A second automaton, depicting a woman, was added in 1651 to alternate with Jacquemart in sounding the hours. In 1714 the couple got the first kid (a boy) and in 1884 the second kid (a girl) joined the family.