Church of Notre-Dame

Notre-Dame, built between 1220 and 1250, is one of the purest examples of early Gothic in Burgundy. The west front is the eccentric part: three rows of slim columns and 51 grotesque gargoyles, most of them 19th-century replacements for those knocked off in the Revolution. The two tower clocks include a 14th-century Jacquemart figure that strikes the hours — looted from Courtrai by Philip the Bold in 1382, who brought it back to Dijon as a war trophy.

The interior is taller and lighter than the cramped exterior suggests. The 11th-century Black Virgin of Bon-Espoir behind the high altar is one of the oldest wooden statues in France. The Chouette — the city's symbolic owl — is on the north side of the church on Rue de la Chouette. Touch it with the left hand and make a wish.

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A story
On the side wall of the church, smoothed by 600 years of hands, is a small stone owl — the Chouette. Touch it with your left hand, make a wish, and tradition says it comes true. In 2001 a vandal damaged the owl with a hammer; the city replaced it from a 19th-century mould, and the wish-tradition picked up again within weeks.

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