French City Break: Colmar, Alsace | EUROtoday

Often known as a fairy story city, Colmar is definitely among the many loveliest of the Alsatian cities and villages that satellite tv for pc Strasbourg – however it’s rather more than only a fairly face.

As a part of the long-disputed Alsace-Lorraine area, grabbed alternately by Germany and France for hundreds of years, Colmar’s rainbow-hued, half-timbered previous city appears to have integrated one of the best of each nations to reach at a personality all its personal. And although its winding cobbled streets are lined with vacationer retailers, its Renaissance and medieval structure and excellent cultural wealth greater than make up for it with their inescapable appeal. Colmar’s accessibility is a part of its attract. About 2.5 hours from Paris by TGV, the town’s previous city – the middle of Colmar life for eight centuries – is simply quarter-hour on foot from the central prepare station. It’s seemingly you will have good climate too, as Colmar has one of many sunniest, driest climates in all of France. Indeed its local weather and geography knowledgeable its future. Situated on a fertile plain between the Vosges mountains and the Rhine, the bustling city was a viticultural and agricultural heart, and stays the principal city on the Alsace wine route.

Wine was all the time a consider Colmar’s fortunes. The affluent retailers who traded in wheat and wine within the metropolis’s thriving fifteenth and sixteenth centuries constructed ornate homes befitting their station. Admiring the previous city’s deliciously coloured half-timbered homes, overflowing with flower-laden window bins, can severely tax your neck muscle mass. It’s all value it, although, because the nearer you look the extra is revealed of life in Colmar in its medieval and Renaissance heyday.