A fourteenth-century fortress that Louis XI had pulled down in 1478, rebuilt as a country house, and filled since 1979 with the machines of the twentieth century: nearly a hundred fighter jets stand on the lawn of a working Burgundy wine estate.
At a glance
- What — a listed château and working wine estate that houses seven museums of mechanical and viticultural collections
- Where — Savigny-lès-Beaune, Côte-d’Or, in the Côte de Beaune vineyards north of Beaune
- Built — around 1340, by Jean de Frolois, Marshal of the Duchy of Burgundy, for Duke Eudes IV
- Listed — château and Petit Château inscribed as monuments historiques on 18 December 1940
- Admission — €14 full, €11 reduced, €8.50 for ages 8–17, free under 8; one ticket covers all the collections, the cellars and the park
History
The château was built around 1340 by Jean de Frolois, Marshal of the Duchy of Burgundy, for Duke Eudes IV: a moated fortress on a river, in the vineyards that would become the Côte de Beaune. It lasted less than a century and a half in that form. In 1478 Louis XI had it dismantled — the reprisal for its owner having taken the side of Marie de Bourgogne and her husband, the future Emperor Maximilian, in the Burgundian war of succession. What survives of the fortress is small and precise: the corbels of the machicolations, still readable on two of the towers.
The Bouhier family rebuilt it as a house. Étienne Bouhier restored and embellished it in the early seventeenth century; his son Jean, owner from 1635, had the great interior staircase built on the model of the one Mansart had made at Maisons-Laffitte; Jean’s son Bénigne, from 1671, added the «Petit Château» that still stands beside it. Bénigne’s eldest son, also Jean Bouhier, was elected to the Académie française in 1727. In 1689 the property passed to the De Migieu family and then, by marriage, to the Comte de la Loyère.
Two episodes are worth keeping. In 1719 the président De Migieu had to give up his own château for some months: it was assigned as the enforced residence of the Duchesse du Maine during her exile in Burgundy. And in the nineteenth century the Comte de la Loyère presided over the Côte-d’Or viticulture committee from 1854 to 1879, working with Dr Jules Guyot, whose books on vine-growing are still authoritative and who died and was buried at Savigny in 1872 — so the estate has a place in the history of how Burgundy learned to prune.
The château and the Petit Château were inscribed as monuments historiques on 18 December 1940. Then came the worst chapter: in 1973 a descendant sold the property to a swindler, and the building was stripped and its contents dispersed. In 1979 it was bought by Michel Pont, a winegrower who restored it, opened it to the public, and began installing inside and around it the collections that now define it. Pont died in 2021, at eighty-nine.
What you see
From the park the building reads as what it became rather than what it was: a long pale block with four round towers under tall conical roofs, tall windows, a terrace. Only at the tower tops does the fourteenth century show through, in the stone corbels that once carried the machicolations. The river that fed the moat still crosses the grounds.
Then there are the aircraft. The park holds what the château describes as the largest collection of fighter jets in the world — close to a hundred aircraft brought from all over, among them four from the Patrouille de France, eleven MiGs and seventeen Dassaults, parked on the grass in front of a listed medieval foundation. It is the juxtaposition, more than any single object, that makes the place.
The seven museums
- Aeronautics — close to a hundred fighter jets in the park, including four of the Patrouille de France, eleven MiGs and seventeen Dassaults.
- Vintage motorcycles — close to 250 machines dating from 1902 to 1960, from every nationality: Norton, Vincent, Gilera, Velocette, MV, Rudge, AJS, Terrot, Honda, Blériot, Peugeot, BSA, NSU, Horex, Saroléa. Among them the motorcycle of the aviator Jean Mermoz and that of Canon Kir.
- Abarth racing cars — about thirty prototypes, some of them unique, which Michel Pont himself raced in international hillclimbs and on circuit. The château is the seat of the Club Abarth.
- Aerospace — opened in 2019: two seven-metre reproductions of the Ariane 4 and Ariane 5 rockets, two communications satellites, and models including an Ariane 4 fairing and a Leduc 002.
- Scale models — some 8,000 of them, among which 1,200 motorcycles at 1/18, 3,400 aircraft at 1/72 and 600 cars at 1/43.
- Fire engines — about twenty vehicles, from 1905 to 1984.
- Wine and vine equipment — the tools with which the region made wine before mechanisation, and about thirty prototype straddle tractors built between 1946 and 1956: the machines that replaced the horse in the narrow rows of the Côte, a collection the château calls unique in Burgundy.
The estate has not stopped being an estate. The old cellars are furnished and open, and the tasting pavilion occupies the seventeenth-century Petit Château, so a visit runs from a Republican-era vine tool to a MiG without leaving the property.
Practical information & getting there
Opening. From 29 March to 24 October, every day, 9:00–18:30. From 27 October to 28 March, Thursday to Monday, 10:00–17:30, closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Last admission one hour before closing. Closed on 25 December, 1 January and from 5 to 22 January inclusive.
Admission. Full €14; reduced €11 for students under 26 and jobseekers; €8.50 for ages 8 to 17; free up to 7 and for visitors with disabilities; groups from twenty people on request. The ticket covers all the collections, the château and its furnished cellars, and the park.
Getting there. Savigny-lès-Beaune lies a few kilometres north of Beaune, off the road into the hills, and Beaune is on the main line from Dijon and Lyon and beside the A6 motorway. Telephone +33 3 80 21 55 03.
Sources & resources
- Château de Savigny-lès-Beaune — history, for the construction of 1340, the dismantling of 1478, the Bouhier and De Migieu owners, the Duchesse du Maine in 1719, the listing of 18 December 1940, the 1973 sale and the purchase by Michel Pont in 1979.
- Château de Savigny-lès-Beaune — the seven museums, for the contents and the counts of each collection, and the home page for opening times and prices, read on 27 August 2026.
- Château de Savigny-lès-Beaune on the French Wikipedia, for the reason behind the 1478 reprisal, the 20-hectare vineyard, and the death of Michel Pont in 2021 — which the château’s own pages, written earlier, still do not record.
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photo