Working craftspeople
A blacksmith, potter, carpenter and baker at work in front of you.
Thomas Bresson — CC BY 4.0 · Thomas Bresson — CC BY 4.0 · Thomas Bresson — CC BY 4.0 · Thomas Bresson — CC BY 4.0
**Four hours minimum, and a full day is the right answer.** This is the common mistake: people arrive with two hours in their pocket, cover half the site and leave thinking it overpriced. The grounds are wide and simply walking between buildings eats time, and the value is in stopping — sitting with the blacksmith, waiting for the bread to come out, watching a craft demonstration, letting children get close to the animals. Eat lunch on site and treat it as the whole day rather than a stop in one.
No. The site is **seasonal**: it normally opens from spring to autumn, then opens for a special period in December for the Christmas markets and winter customs, and closes in other months. Its hours and programme also change with the season — the craft demonstrations and activities are not all available every day. **Check the official calendar** before travelling, especially if you are driving twenty-five kilometres from Colmar specifically for it.
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Not a museum in a building but **a whole Alsatian village** rebuilt in the open air: more than seventy genuine historic houses and structures, dismantled one by one from villages across the region when they faced demolition, their timber and stone carried here and reassembled across a wide site at Ungersheim, about twenty-six kilometres south of Colmar. It is the largest open-air museum in France, and its idea is that you walk through a living village of the early twentieth century: houses with their real furniture and kitchens, a farm with its animals, and a blacksmith, potter, carpenter and baker actually working in front of you, along with fields, pasture, a canal and an old carousel. The site changes with the seasons: harvest work in autumn, winter and Christmas customs in December, and spring with new births in the barns. This is **a full day**, not a two-hour visit, and it is by a wide margin the best thing to do in Alsace with children — open space, animals, crafts and activity in every corner instead of silent galleries.
A blacksmith, potter, carpenter and baker at work in front of you.
Barns, fields and new births in spring.
Kitchens and rooms of the early 20th century as they were.
Chemin du Grosswald, 68190 Ungersheim