The octagonal oriel
1537 timber hung on the corner — Colmar's architectural signature.
Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · FrDr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · FrDr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · FrDr — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because it documents a turning moment: the first full Renaissance façade in a Gothic trading town — new burgher wealth declaring itself as street art. Scale, colour and perfect preservation did the rest through five centuries of painters and photographers.
In Europe-Japan's mutual craze, Hokusai's school drew imagined European views from imported prints — the Pfister house and oriel among them. Colmar tells it proudly in its museums; the nicer lesson: the house went viral two centuries before the word.
The adjoining Schongauer house (home of Colmar's earliest painter), the Bartholdi museum steps on, the collegiate church behind — this Rue des Marchands being every Colmar walk's spine anyway.
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The Pfister house is Alsace's most famous house outright: built by a rich hatter-silversmith in 1537, gathering on one façade all the Rhine Renaissance could do — an octagonal timber oriel on the corner, a spiral stair turret, a two-storey wooden gallery, painted biblical and imperial murals across the plaster. It was Colmar's first 'modern' house — full Renaissance in a Gothic town — and became its visual signature: in every Alsace book, drawn by Hokusai among European views, and sworn by Ghibli lovers to have inspired Miyazaki's moving castle. The house is private, seen from outside only — and standing at the Rue des Marchands corner to frame oriel and murals is an obligatory ten-minute Colmar rite, its neighbours (the Schongauer house, the Bartholdi museum) turning the corner into an open street museum.
1537 timber hung on the corner — Colmar's architectural signature.
Emperors and evangelists in sixteenth-century colour on plaster.
Fans call it Howl's castle's grandfather — and the likeness smiles.
11 Rue des Marchands, 68000 Colmar