Beaune's Hôtel de Ville has a past that its official title doesn't hint at. The building began life as an Ursuline convent, founded in 1626 to educate the daughters of Beaune's respectable Catholic families at a time when the Protestant Reformation was making the church nervous about its grip on the next generation.

The arched gallery facing the street was once the cloister, enclosed on all four sides until a road was cut through to serve the town hall, which it would eventually become. The Ursulines were unusual: founded in Brescia in 1535, they were the first Catholic institute dedicated entirely to women's education. That a school for girls became a seat of civic administration is a quietly interesting reversal.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour of Beaune uses the Hôtel de Ville to unpick the city's layered past, tracing how religious institutions shaped the urban fabric long before wine became Beaune's defining industry.