Colmar

Colmar is like stepping into a storybook. The 'Little Venice' district, with its canals and flower-draped houses in candy colors — pink, yellow, blue, and green — is impossibly charming and arguably the most photogenic town in all of France. The town is the gateway to the Alsace Wine Route and home to the stunning Isenheim Altarpiece at the Unterlinden Museum, a masterpiece of medieval art that draws art historians from around the world. Colmar's perfectly preserved old town features an extraordinary concentration of medieval and Renaissance architecture, from the ornate Pfister House with its painted facade and wooden galleries to the Koifhus (Old Customs House) where merchants once traded. The Covered Market (Marche Couvert), a magnificent iron-and-glass structure on the banks of the River Lauch, is the perfect place to assemble a picnic of Munster cheese, charcuterie, pretzel bread, and a bottle of Grand Cru Riesling. Wine is central to Colmar's identity — the town sits at the heart of the Alsace viticultural area, with the vineyards of the Haut-Rhin producing some of France's most expressive white wines. Grand Cru designations like Schlossberg, Hengst, and Brand yield Rieslings of extraordinary mineral precision, while Gewurztraminer from these same slopes offers an intensity of lychee and rose petal that no other region can match. Nearby Eguisheim, regularly voted France's most beautiful village, features concentric circles of half-timbered houses arranged around a 13th-century castle. Riquewihr, another medieval jewel, feels like a film set with its fortified gate, cobbled streets, and ancient winstubs. Colmar's Christmas market — the Marche de Noel — rivals Strasbourg's in atmosphere, with the added intimacy of a smaller town. For dining, JY'S holds two Michelin stars for its innovative fusion of French and Japanese cuisines, while traditional winstubs like Le Fer Rouge and Wistub Brenner serve magnificent Alsatian comfort food.

Highlights