Belleville-en-Beaujolais lies on the Saône at the foot of the Beaujolais hills, and it has one treasure that surprises most visitors: an eighteenth-century Hôtel-Dieu, a charitable hospital with great wards lined with curtained beds, a chapel and an apothecary with its original jars. It served the sick for more than two centuries and is now a museum, one of the best-preserved hospitals of its kind in France.
Behind the town, the hills rise steeply, and the slopes are covered with vineyards. This is the heart of the Beaujolais crus, the ten villages whose wines carry their own names: Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Régnié, Morgon, Fleurie and the rest. The highest point nearby is Mont Brouilly, a volcanic hill crowned by a small chapel, Notre-Dame-aux-Raisins, built in the nineteenth century by winegrowers to protect their vines from disease. The view from the top over the vineyards, the Saône valley and, on clear days, the Alps, is superb.
The roads up Mont Brouilly and through the vineyards are narrow, steep and twisting, with hairpins and blind corners, and they are a joy on a motorcycle, if you take them gently. Surfaces vary, and in harvest season, in September, tractors and grape pickers are everywhere. The routes through the cru villages, from Brouilly to Fleurie and Juliénas, are a classic tour.
Belleville has fuel, food and basic services. For a high point, the summit of Mont Brouilly is unbeatable, and the wine villages offer plenty of places to stop for a coffee, a meal or a tasting for a passenger.