Alsace's fairytale wine capital — half-timbered canals, Riesling, and tarte flambée
Colmar is the wine capital of Alsace — a city of 16th-century half-timbered houses in candy colours, a Venetian-style canal quarter called Little Venice, and a historic centre so intact it served as partial inspiration for the village in Beauty and the Beast. The Alsatian food here is extraordinary — tarte flambée (thin-crust cream and lardons), choucroute garnie, baeckeoffe stew, and kugelhopf cake — and the Wine Route begins literally at the edge of town.
Colmar has passed between France and Germany four times since 1870 — French until the Franco-Prussian War (1871), German until World War I (1919), German again under Nazi annexation (1940), and French since 1945 — which explains the bilingual street signs, the German surnames, and the Alsatian dialect that is neither quite French nor German. The city miraculously survived both World Wars largely intact, preserving the medieval core that makes it look like a stage set.