The French village of Dijon, nestled in the Bourgogne region of France, is not only famous for its mustard, but it’s a fantastic and large medieval city, filled with buildings dating back many centuries.
But it’s also the source of a real mystery for me. If you walk around this huge town and admire the architecture, you’ll find that it is almost exclusively buildings made of stone. But from time to time you’ll see something like this:
Or this
Which are wood “half-timbered” or Fachwerk houses.
Although these types of buildings are the de facto standard in Eastern France, Germany, and Northern Switzerland – why are are few of them here? And why are they interspersed so spartanly in what are otherwise stone buildings?
It’s one of the many mysteries on my list that I hope to clarify someday!