A bell that rang to announce the inn’s opening hours gave this Dijon coaching house its name, first recorded in 1424 as the Hostellerie de la Cloiche, a stopping point for merchants and pilgrims passing through what was then the capital of the Dukes of Burgundy. Records from 1594 and 1670 confirm it as an established inn hosting nobility, and actor Lekain, a protégé of Voltaire, stayed there in 1753. Napoleon III spent a night at the hotel in June 1856.
Owner Edmond Goisset gave the building its current Haussmannian facade in the 19th century, and it survived being occupied by a German Army garrison during the 1940 fall of France, though the occupation left it badly damaged. Business never fully recovered afterward, and the hotel closed in 1973, with developers planning to demolish it entirely; the contents were auctioned off before two local preservation associations gathered 80,000 signatures to save the building, which was granted historic monument status in 1975. It reopened in 1982 and later joined the MGallery collection.