Visiting Colmar: what to see, and how long does it take?

Colmar in one sentence

Capital of Alsace wines and the third city of the region, Colmar came through the wars without losing its old centre: neither the bombing of 1945 nor the planning decades that followed touched its medieval quarters. That explains the unusual density of the centre, where six centuries of architecture fit into a few hundred metres. The town is also the birthplace of Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, a twelve-metre replica of which greets visitors at the northern entrance.

What to see in Colmar: the essentials in half a day

Everything is done on foot, the historic centre being almost entirely pedestrian. In the order of a sensible walk:

• Little Venice: the boatmen's houses lined along the Lauch, seen from the Saint-Pierre bridge. It is the most photographed view in Alsace, best early in the morning when you have it to yourself.
• The Tanners' quarter: tall narrow houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose open lofts were used to dry hides.
• The covered market: a brick and cast-iron hall from 1865, reopened in 2010, selling cheeses, pretzels and wine by the glass.
• The Koifhus: the former customs house of 1480, the town's first public building, where the Decapolis cities settled their taxes.
• The Pfister house: its 1537 facade, with wooden gallery and corner turret, passes for the finest merchant house in Alsace.
• The House of Heads: a hundred and five grimacing faces carved on a Renaissance facade of 1609, now a hotel and restaurant.
• Saint-Martin collegiate church: yellow and pink sandstone, completed in the fourteenth century, often called Colmar cathedral although it never held that status.

The Unterlinden museum and the Issenheim altarpiece

Housed in a thirteenth-century Dominican convent and extended in 2015 by Herzog and de Meuron, Unterlinden is the most visited museum in Alsace. People come for the Issenheim altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grunewald between 1512 and 1516 for a hospital order that treated ergotism: a Crucifixion of rare violence, restored between 2018 and 2022. The rest of the collection covers the Rhenish Middle Ages, the German primitives and a solid modern holding, from Monet to Picasso. Allow two hours, more if painting holds you. The Dominican church, three minutes away, keeps Martin Schongauer's Virgin of the Rose Bower, worth the detour on its own.

How long, and in which season

Half a day covers the historic centre, a full day with Unterlinden and a pause at the covered market. Two days let you add the Bartholdi museum, the Dominican church and a run into the vineyard. As for season, April to June gives flowered facades without the August crowd; September brings harvest light and terraces still open. In late July the wine fair draws a considerable public and fills the hotels. From late November to late December the town runs on Christmas market time, a subject covered on its own page.

Getting there and parking

Colmar is 70 kilometres from Strasbourg, fifty minutes by the A35, and the station is served directly from Paris in under three hours. As the old centre is pedestrian, you park on its immediate edge: the Rapp, Lacarre, Scheurer-Kestner or Mairie car parks, all under ten minutes' walk from Little Venice. In high season and on Saturdays they fill before midday. The town suits walking far better than driving: once parked, the car only serves to leave for the vines.

Colmar and the vineyard: what happens after the town

Colmar has no hillside of its own. The first vines start at Wettolsheim and Eguisheim, seven kilometres away, Turckheim at the same distance, Kaysersberg and Riquewihr about twenty minutes out. That is why the town works as a base rather than a wine destination: you sleep there, you dine there, and you taste elsewhere. Two options suit visitors without a car, or unwilling to drive after a tasting: the tours departing from Colmar, which pick up the vineyard over half a day or a full day, and the custom itinerary if you have a particular village in mind. The detail of the formats from the town is set out in our article on the Wine Route tour from Colmar.