Our history 

Guillaume Millière, a cloth merchant, and his wife Guillemette Durand had this house built in 1483 behind Nostre-Dame church to embellish the street, on the site of a shanty they had acquired from the Chanoines de la Sainte Chapelle.

Five years earlier, Charles the Bold had fallen before Nancy and Louis XI had united Burgundy with France. Christopher Columbus was about to discover America; it was the end of the Middle Ages.

A line of craftsmen and merchants brought this house through the centuries, embodying the soul of Burgundy for tourists and Dijon residents alike.

Maison Millière has stood the test of time, despite municipal ordinances forbidding the renovation of old wooden buildings to combat the fires that repeatedly ravaged the town.

Closed for decades, and once a warehouse for a hardware store, the sleeping beauty was not far from giving up the ghost under the combined effect of rain and time, which assaulted its centuries-old beams; its last restoration was in 1927.

Who hasn’t stood in awe before its basket-handle arches, its stone bench, and its St. Andrew’s cross half-timbering, curiously filled with glazed bricks!

The upper floor features a series of narrow windows adorned with curly cabbages, vine leaves, and enigmatic masks. A large corbelled beam depicts a crouching predator on its left and a gentle lion on its right, holding under its paw a coat of arms bearing the founders’ initials: two Gothic Gs linked by a cord of love.

On its roof, a Cat and a Grand Duc in polychrome earthenware take part in the Vow ritual linked to the little Owl carved in the stone of one of the church’s buttresses. Its interior garden, called “le Merle chez qui j’habite” (the Blackbird I live with), winds its way through the vineyards to lose itself in the Burgundy countryside.

In an exceptional setting steeped in history and good vibes, the Maison Millière is a listed historic monument. Part of J.P. Rappeneau’s film Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Gérard Depardieu, was shot here. A masterpiece!

In 1998, it took a year’s work by master craftsmen to open the house to the people of Dijon, thanks to Philippe Bernard, owner and lover of timber-framed houses, and Lydia and Jean François Lieutet, a couple of passionate craftsmen.