The fish quay
Alsace's most famous row of coloured houses — the picture you came for.
Jorge Franganillo from Barcelona, Spain — CC BY 2.0 · Nikolai Karaneschev — CC BY 3.0 · Gzen92 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Gzen92 — CC BY-SA 4.0
A full day covers the town, but staying over gives you the quarter empty at morning and evening when the visitors are gone — its two finest hours. Many come for the day from Strasbourg (half an hour by train), which works perfectly.
Geraniums peak May to September; the Christmas markets run late November through December. Between them, October offers the golden Alsace vineyards around town — there is genuinely no losing season.
The whole old town connects on foot: the Maison des Têtes, the Pfister house and the Unterlinden museum within ten minutes. Colmar is one continuous walking town.
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Little Venice is Colmar's jewel: half-timbered Alsatian houses in candy colours — pink, blue, yellow — lining both banks of the small river Lauch, their balconies drowned in geraniums all summer. The name is a fond exaggeration; the beauty is no exaggeration at all. This was the quarter of fishermen, market gardeners and tanners, its sixteenth-century houses preserved entire. Explore it first on foot over the little bridges, then by boat: quiet flat-bottomed barques glide under the bridges between the houses — twenty minutes worth every cent. In December the quarter becomes a complete Christmas scene of lights and markets — Colmar's most famous season — though the summer flowers rival the lights fairly.
Alsace's most famous row of coloured houses — the picture you came for.
A quiet drift under the bridges between the houses — the quarter from water level.
The classic view of the coloured bend — the best sunset spot.
The old food market at the quarter's edge — an unfussy Alsatian lunch.
Quai de la Poissonnerie, 68000 Colmar