Colmar is the storybook capital of Alsace wine country: a compact old town of half-timbered houses painted ochre, rust and sage, threaded by the slow green water of the Lauch and set at the foot of the Vosges vineyards. For centuries it was a prosperous free town of the Holy Roman Empire, and then changed hands between France and Germany again and again, which is why street names, menus and church spires here feel French and German at once. The result is a place that looks almost too pretty to be real, yet is still a working town of roughly 70,000 people.
It is also an ideal city to explore with a self-guided audio guide. The centre is small enough to cross in twenty minutes, but nearly every façade carries a story: a hatter who built a Renaissance showpiece, a Dominican convent that became one of France's most visited museums, a local boy who went on to sculpt the Statue of Liberty. Walk the canals at your own pace and let each landmark's guide fill in the history as you reach it.
Little Venice and the Lauch
Start where everyone starts, in La Petite Venise. The name is a stretch, but the view from the Pont Saint-Pierre over the Lauch, with flower boxes and four-hundred-year-old houses leaning into the water, is the image that put Colmar on the map. Flat-bottomed barques punt visitors along the canal from the bridge, and the walk along the Quai de la Poissonnerie, the old fishmongers' quay, is among the most photographed stretches in Alsace. Just behind it lies the Quartier des Tanneurs, where tall 17th- and 18th-century houses once dried hides in their open upper floors, and the 19th-century brick-and-iron Marché Couvert, still a proper food market (closed Mondays) and a good first stop for bretzels, Munster cheese and a glass of Riesling.
The Painted Houses of the Old Town
Colmar's medieval and Renaissance core is where the audio guides earn their keep. The Maison Pfister, built in 1537 for the wealthy hatter Ludwig Scherer, is the town's postcard: a wooden gallery, a corner oriel and painted biblical scenes under a steep roof. A few streets away, the 17th-century Maison des Têtes is studded with dozens of carved stone faces grinning from its façade. On the Place de l'Ancienne Douane, the Koïfhus of 1480, the old customs house and the oldest surviving public building in Colmar, stands over the Fontaine Schwendi, a bronze by Bartholdi from 1898 honouring the man said to have brought the Tokay grape to Alsace. Nearby, the Adolph House of about 1350 is one of the oldest houses in town.
Grünewald, Schongauer and Saint-Martin
Colmar punches far above its size in late-medieval art. The Musée Unterlinden, housed in a 13th-century Dominican convent, holds the Isenheim Altarpiece, the harrowing, luminous masterpiece painted by Matthias Grünewald between 1512 and 1516 with sculpted panels by Nikolaus Hagenauer. Across town, the Gothic Église des Dominicains keeps Martin Schongauer's Madonna of the Rose Bower, while the red and gold sandstone Collégiale Saint-Martin, raised in the 13th and 14th centuries, anchors the main square with its distinctive lantern tower. An audio guide is the right companion here: these works reward knowing who commissioned them and why.
Bartholdi, Hansi and Colmar's Artists
Auguste Bartholdi was born in Colmar in 1834, and his birthplace is now the Musée Bartholdi, full of models and studies for the monument that made him famous. The town returned the compliment with a 12-metre Statue de la Liberté replica on a roundabout at its northern entrance. A gentler local hero is the illustrator Jean-Jacques Waltz, known as Hansi, whose storks, stout villagers and red-roofed villages defined the Alsatian image; Le Village Hansi & son Musée gathers his prints and a shop of the biscuit tins he decorated.
Christmas in Colmar
From late November into the New Year, Noël Féerique Colmar turns the old town into six linked Christmas markets, nearly two hundred wooden chalets from the Place des Dominicains to the Koïfhus, with a children's market by the canal in Little Venice where choirs sing carols from illuminated boats. It is one of the most celebrated markets in Europe and the town's busiest season, so book early.
The Wine Route and the Castles
Colmar is the natural base for the 170-kilometre Alsace Wine Route. A ring of villages lies within a short drive or bus ride: Eguisheim, laid out in concentric circles around its castle; Riquewihr, a walled town of Renaissance houses that still looks like its 16th-century self; Kaysersberg-Vignoble, with a ruined keep above the river; Turckheim, where a night watchman still makes his rounds; and Ribeauvillé, beneath three hilltop castles. Further north, the Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, a 12th-century fortress rebuilt by Kaiser Wilhelm II from 1899, watches the whole plain from its ridge.
Getting There and Around
Colmar is about two and a half hours from Paris by direct TGV and twenty-five minutes from Strasbourg by regional train; Basel airport is under an hour away. The old town is pedestrian-friendly and flat, so a day on foot with your audio guide covers the centre; for the wine villages, rent a car or take the seasonal shuttles that run from the station.