Colmar

Colmar looks the way children draw fairy-tale towns: crooked half-timbered houses painted rose, mint and buttercup, window boxes overflowing, and the flower-hung canals of the Little Venice quarter reflecting it all back doubled. The town anchors the Alsace wine route and pours its rieslings and gewurztraminers in tasting rooms on every second lane - but it also guards one of European art's great shocks: the Isenheim Altarpiece in the Unterlinden Museum, a wrenching, visionary masterpiece painted for a plague hospital five centuries ago, worth the trip on its own. Add beautifully preserved merchant houses and a December market to rival Strasbourg's, and Colmar earns its postcard reputation honestly.

History

Colmar is first mentioned by Charlemagne in his chronicle of the Saxon wars, and in 884 the emperor Charles the Fat held a diet here. Frederick II made it a free imperial city in 1226, and in 1354 it joined the Décapole league of Alsatian cities; it adopted the Reformation in 1575, was held by the Swedish army for two years from 1632 during the Thirty Years' War, and gained its first town library in 1634. Louis XIV took the city in 1673 and it was ceded to France by the Treaties of Nijmegen in 1679. In 1863 the Colmar Treasure, a hoard of precious objects hidden by the town's Jews during the Black Death, was found here (Wikipedia, Colmar).

What to look for

• Little Venice - the canal quarter by flat-bottomed boat or slow foot.
• The Isenheim Altarpiece - the Unterlinden's devastating, unmissable masterpiece.
• The old town's merchant houses - Pfister House and its carved, painted neighbours.
• The wine route villages - Eguisheim, Riquewihr and Kaysersberg minutes away by car or bike.

When to go

Spring through early autumn drapes the town in its famous flowers; the September harvest animates the villages around it; December's Christmas markets are storybook-grade. It is a year-round town - even foggy winter mornings flatter the colours.

What to expect

Colmar's beauty is no secret - summer and December middays move at shuffle pace through the narrowest lanes, and Little Venice boat queues grow long. Sleep in town and take the streets at eight in the morning to have the postcard to yourself. The town is compact; the second day belongs to the wine villages, which concentrate the same charm with fewer crowds. The altarpiece deserves an unhurried hour, not a glance.

Nearby

Eguisheim, Riquewihr and the wine route villages, Strasbourg up the line, and the Vosges ridge walks above the vineyards.

Key facts