Colmar: A Gentle Pace Along the Alsace Wine Route

Most stories about Colmar begin with the colours: the ochre, pink and powder-blue houses leaning over a canal in the quarter everyone calls Little Venice. Ours begins with something less photogenic and far more useful. Colmar is flat.

The town sits on the Alsace plain at barely 175 to 215 metres above sea level, with the Vosges mountains standing politely back a few kilometres to the west. The vineyards climb; the town does not. That one geographical accident turns a famous destination into something rare: a place where the beautiful parts are all within a level ten or fifteen minutes of each other, and where a day of sightseeing does not have to be a day of stairs.

Add a quirk of the weather — Colmar is among the driest towns in France, with only around 595 mm of rain a year, sheltered in the rain shadow of the Vosges — and you have a destination that rewards an unhurried visit. Stay three or four nights, let the wine villages come to you in short bursts, and Alsace becomes one of the gentlest trips in Europe.

A little history

Colmar appears in the records in the 9th century, in the time of Charlemagne's successors, and grew rich enough that Emperor Frederick II made it a free imperial city in 1226. In 1354 it joined the Décapole, a league of ten Alsatian imperial towns that looked after their own trade and defence. Those centuries of merchant self-confidence are exactly what you walk through today: the customs house, the Koïfhus of 1480, where goods were taxed and stored, and the carved timber houses of the wine and cloth dealers.

Alsace then spent four hundred years changing hands between France and the German world, most painfully after 1871. Colmar's most famous son, the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was born here in 1834 and went on to design the Statue of Liberty; he was defending his home town in the war of 1870 when Alsace was lost to Prussia. Liberty, it turns out, has Alsatian roots.

The Wine Route itself is young by comparison. It was inaugurated on 30 May 1953 and is the oldest wine route in France, running roughly 170 kilometres from Marlenheim in the north to Thann in the south through dozens of villages. Colmar sits almost exactly in the middle of it.

Remains of the medieval enclosures of Colmar, Haut-Rhin, France.

What to see

Everything below is in the old town and reachable on the level. Take two half-days rather than one long one.

Little Venice and the Lauch

The canals are not canals at all but the little river Lauch, once used to float produce into town. The classic view is from the Pont Saint-Pierre, and you can reach it without a step. Flat-bottomed boats make short trips of around half an hour; be aware that you step down into the boat and that passengers duck as the low bridges pass.

Rue des Marchands and the Maison Pfister

The merchants' street is the loveliest stretch of carved timber and painted plaster in Alsace. The Maison Pfister of 1537, with its wooden gallery and corner oriel, is the one everyone photographs. It is pedestrianised, level and short.

The Unterlinden Museum

Housed in a 13th-century Dominican convent, this is one of France's great provincial museums, and the home of the Isenheim Altarpiece — a hinged masterpiece of the early 16th century whose crucifixion panel still stops people mid-sentence. It is a big museum; plan a pause.

Saint-Martin's collegiate church

Built between 1234 and 1365 in warm Vosges sandstone, Saint-Martin anchors the old town's central square. Its south side carries fine medieval carving, and the interior is cool, step-free at the main entrance and a good place to sit.

Bartholdi's town

The sculptor's birthplace is now a museum, and his statues turn up quietly all over Colmar — a scavenger hunt that needs no map and no hills.

Rue des Marchands seen from the Koïfhus, Colmar's old customs house.

The Wine Route, village by village

You do not need to drive the whole 170 kilometres. From Colmar, three or four villages are within about 5 to 20 kilometres, which is 10 to 30 minutes by road, and each is a single pleasant street or ring of streets.

• Eguisheim, around 5 to 7 km south-west, is built as concentric rings around the site of its old castle. The lanes are flat, the circuit is short, and it was once voted France's favourite village.
• Riquewihr, about 12 to 15 km north, is walled and car-free, with one long main street that slopes gently upward. Walk up slowly, coast down.
• Kaysersberg, roughly 10 to 12 km north-west, sits in the mouth of a valley: charming and level along the stream, steeper if you go up to the ruined keep. The view from the bottom is quite enough.
• Ribeauvillé, about 15 to 18 km north, is the largest of the four and has the easiest parking.

By car it is simple. Without a car, regional Fluo buses link Colmar station with several wine villages, but departures are few, often weekday-only, and thin on Sundays — check the day before, or take a half-day minibus tour, which is what we would do.

A day trip nearby

Two very different outings sit within easy reach.

Strasbourg is roughly 30 to 40 minutes north by frequent regional train, with the cathedral and the Petite France quarter a tram ride from the station. It makes a comfortable day out with no driving at all.

Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, about 30 to 40 minutes north by road, is the great red-sandstone castle floating above the plain, restored for Kaiser Wilhelm II in the early 1900s. Be honest with yourself about this one: from the car park it is a gravel path of around 300 metres with a slight but steady climb, and the indoor route includes roughly 300 steps of uneven height, with resting seats along the way. There are reserved spaces for visitors with limited mobility at the highest point, and the outdoor courtyards are the manageable part. If stairs are not for you, the view of the castle from the vineyards below is magnificent and free.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• Stay inside or just beside the old town. Colmar's station is about a kilometre from the centre — 15 to 20 flat minutes on foot, or a short taxi ride. Choosing a hotel between the Unterlinden Museum and Little Venice means everything is a five-minute stroll.
• The ground is level but not smooth. Expect cobbles, old paving and a few shallow steps onto bridges. Firm-soled shoes matter more here than walking boots; a stick with a rubber tip is useful on wet cobbles.
• Let the little tourist train do the first lap. The open road-train circuit of the old town takes just over half an hour and gives you your bearings without walking.
• Avoid July and August afternoons if heat bothers you. The plain is sheltered and sunny, and summer days can climb well above 30 °C; mornings and early evenings are far kinder.
• Think twice about December. The Christmas markets are genuinely beautiful and genuinely crowded, with narrow streets packed shoulder to shoulder and rooms booked many months ahead. Lovely if you like a crowd; difficult if you do not.
• Build in the benches. The Champ-de-Mars park on the edge of the old town is flat, shaded and the natural place to rest between sights.
• Hire a car only for the villages. Drive out mid-morning, visit one village, have lunch, come back. Two villages in a day is plenty.

Rue de l'Église in Colmar, with the old town's typical cobbled paving.

What to eat

Alsatian cooking is French in finesse and German in generosity, and portions are large. Share where you can.

Tarte flambée, or flammekueche, is the easiest and lightest introduction: a wafer-thin base with cream, onions and smoked bacon, baked fiercely and eaten in slices. Choucroute garnie is the famous one — sauerkraut slowly cooked with Riesling and juniper, served with smoked pork and sausages. Baeckeoffe, meaning baker's oven, is a casserole of marinated meats layered with potatoes and onions and sealed under a lid; order it when you are properly hungry. For afternoon tea there is kougelhopf, the tall ring-shaped yeast cake studded with raisins, and the almond biscuits that fill the bakeries before Christmas.

The wines are mostly white, mostly dry and almost always sold by grape: crisp Riesling, perfumed Gewurztraminer with its notes of lychee and rose, rounder Pinot Gris, light Pinot Noir for the one red, and Crémant d'Alsace if you like bubbles. Tasting rooms along the Wine Route are informal, often free, and happy with a single small glass. Colmar's covered market, near the canals, is flat, indoors and a good place to assemble a picnic.

The house known as "zum Oesterreich" at 23–25 rue des Marchands in Colmar.

Getting there

Our verdict

Colmar has been photographed so often that it is easy to assume it has been used up. It hasn't. What the photographs miss is how kindly the town is built: a compact, level old quarter where the distance between two beautiful things is measured in minutes, where you can sit down whenever you like, and where the hills stay where they belong — out in the vineyards, admired from a terrace with a glass of Riesling.

For travellers over 60, this is one of the most comfortable introductions to rural France we know. Come in late spring or at harvest, stay in the middle of town, give yourself an extra day you don't strictly need, and let Alsace move at the speed it prefers: slowly, and with lunch.

The 1900 carousel in the Champ-de-Mars park in Colmar, said to be the largest wooden one in France.

“In Colmar the hills keep their distance, and everything worth seeing is a flat five minutes away.”

Photo credits

• Little Venice in Colmar 01: Krzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Medieval enclosures of Colmar 3: Krzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Rue des Marchands depuis le Koïfhus Colmar 1: Gzen92, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Rue de l'Eglise in Colmar 01: Krzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Colmar - panoramio 99: Patrick Nouhailler's…, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Carrousel 1900 - Colmar, Alsace 1: Elekes Andor, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons