Hospices de Beaune Wine Auction

Hospices de Beaune Wine Auction

In 1443, the most powerful non-noble man in Europe built a palace for the dying — art historians say out of guilty conscience. He commissioned Rogier van der Weyden to paint a Last Judgement so the patients could see it from their beds. Comfort and warning, simultaneously, across nearly six hundred years of hospital tradition — the museum's own framing. Every November since 1859, the charity he created auctions wine by candlelight — winner is the last bidder before the flame dies. In 2025, one barrel of Pommard sold for €400,000. That single hammer price in a covered market in Beaune echoes through wine price lists worldwide. The museum dates the end of activity to the early 1970s and the handover to visiting to 1988; the parent institution says it has taken no patients since the early 1980s. The roof tiles, fired three times each, last 300 years.