Château de Savigny-lès-Beaune

Château de Savigny-lès-Beaune sits in the village of Savigny-lès-Beaune, six kilometres northwest of Beaune, at the entrance to the valley that cuts back into the Côte de Beaune hills. The village is a classified AOC wine appellation in its own right — Savigny-lès-Beaune, best known for its value-priced Pinot Noir from the premier cru vineyards on the slopes above the village — and the château's own estate produces wine from these same vineyards. The château was the seat of local noble families from the 14th century, its round towers and stone residential wings the standard Burgundian castle vocabulary, designed more for comfortable residence than for serious military defence by the late medieval period when it was built.

The château would be of modest regional interest if it contained only wine and medieval stones. What it also contains is one of the most eccentric and compulsive private collections in France: more than a hundred military aircraft, approximately two hundred motorcycles, and a dedicated Abarth motor-racing collection — accumulated by the current owner, Michel Pont, who acquired the château in 1977 and has spent five decades filling its grounds and outbuildings with objects that interest him.

The aircraft collection is the most dramatic element. Two purpose-built hangars beside the château's park house a significant portion of the planes; further aircraft are parked on the lawn outside the main buildings, creating the surreal image of a Cold War fighter (a MiG-21, a Hawker Hunter, a Dassault Mystère) standing on grass beside a 14th-century tower. The collection spans the Second World War to the end of the jet age: British de Havilland Vampires and de Havilland Venoms, American F-86 Sabres and North American T-6 Texans, French Armée de l'Air jets from the postwar decades, Eastern Bloc aircraft including the MiG. The collection is displayed in a hands-on rather than hands-off way — visitors can walk immediately beside the aircraft, examine the cockpits, and photograph freely — which distinguishes it from the more regulated atmosphere of national aviation museums.

The motorcycle collection of approximately two hundred machines covers the full span of European and American motorcycle manufacturing from the early 20th century to the 1970s and 1980s. British makes — BSA, Norton, Triumph, Velocette, Vincent — are particularly strong, alongside German BMW, Italian Moto Guzzi and Ducati, American Harley-Davidson and Indian, and a significant number of French manufacturers (Terrot, Gnome & Rhône, Monet-Goyon) that produced large quantities of motorcycles in the first half of the 20th century but are now effectively unknown outside specialist circles. The French collection is particularly valuable for documenting an industrial history that has largely disappeared from public consciousness.

The Abarth collection is separately housed and devoted to the Italian racing car preparation specialist Carlo Abarth, whose modified Fiat and other Italian competition cars dominated small-displacement racing in Europe through the 1950s and 1960s. The collection includes multiple period competition cars with their original racing documentation and period photographs, and constitutes one of the most significant dedicated Abarth collections accessible to the public anywhere in Europe.

The wine production from the château's estate — AOC Savigny-lès-Beaune in both red and white, with a proportion of premier cru — is a genuine part of the visit rather than a commercial afterthought. The GYG entry ticket includes a wine tasting; visitors who want to taste more extensively or buy bottles can do so at the château's cellar. Combining a morning at the château with an afternoon in Beaune — the Hôtel-Dieu, the wine merchants along Rue de Lorraine, the fortified old city — is the natural day structure for visitors to the Côte d'Or.