The Pfister house
An octagonal timber oriel and murals of 1537 — Alsace's most famous house.
--sinava-- from Berlin — CC BY 2.0 · Comité central du Club vosgien (Strasbourg). Cartographe — Public domain · koburger2006 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Thiery, C. E.. Illustrateur — Public domain
Strasbourg is a major city with an overwhelming cathedral and varied quarters; Colmar is concentrated beauty walkable in a day. For first architectural awe: Strasbourg. For pure 'Alsace as pictured': Colmar. They are thirty minutes apart by train — so the honest answer is both.
From Place Unterlinden: Rue des Têtes and its house, the collegiate church and square, Rue des Marchands and the Pfister house, the tanners' quarter, ending at Little Venice and the covered market. Two hours with photo stops — and the reverse works for afternoon.
Summer evenings bring artistic façade lighting, and December turns the whole town Christmas. Crowd-haters: the summer evening lights are a spectacular, digestible alternative.
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Old Colmar is the best-preserved of Alsace's towns: it came through two world wars nearly untouched, so its streets remain as six centuries stacked them — leaning half-timbered houses in bright colours, wrought-iron shop signs, small squares around fountains. Its famous houses: the Pfister house with its octagonal wooden oriel and painted walls (1537), the Maison des Têtes with a façade carved with 106 odd heads, the fourteenth-century Adolph house. Churches thread between: the collegiate church under coloured roof tiles, the Dominican church with Schongauer's famous painting. The town is compact enough to walk entirely — Unterlinden to Little Venice is twenty minutes through everything above — and that is its secret with everyone: no transport, no tickets, just lanes opening one onto the next.
An octagonal timber oriel and murals of 1537 — Alsace's most famous house.
A hundred and six carved heads staring from one façade.
The collegiate church's green and gold diamond roof — an Alsatian signature.
Wrought shop signs centuries old — always look above eye level.
Old town, 68000 Colmar