France · Old Town
Colmar
A self-guided walking tour of the Colmar Old Town, every street in one day.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Colmar is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 22.0 km
- Time
- about 6.5 hours
- Streets
- 108
- Steps
- no streets with steps
- Start point
- Musée Unterlinden
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Musée Unterlinden 1,500 points
The north end of your circuit, on a square of its own. It was a convent before it was anything else, and the cloister is still in there: fifty-four twin arches round a garden, and the best spot on this whole circuit to sit down. Then it went and ate the public baths next door. I like a building with an appetite.
Collégiale Saint-Martin 500 points
The square out front is named for a cathedral, and there is no cathedral. The title was true for eleven years around the Revolution, when Colmar briefly had a bishop of its own, and the name simply stayed. It fills a whole side of that square, so you will be going round it whether you meant to or not. My favourite sort of obstacle.
Maison Pfister 500 points
It is at the point where the Rue des Marchands bends, and you will find it by the people who have all stopped in the middle of the road. Look up. Then keep going up, because the good half is the upper one and almost everybody quits at eye level.
Musée Bartholdi 500 points
A house on the Rue des Marchands, and the part I would not skip is the courtyard. Standing in the middle of it is a bronze group called the Great Supports of the World, cast in 1902 and set down here in 1909, when its maker was already dead.
Ancienne douane (Koïfhus) 250 points
It closes the south end of your circuit, on the square that carries its name. Walk round it rather than past it: a wooden loggia sits on stone columns, and along the north building somebody carved human masks onto the windows. I could look at those all afternoon, and I have.
Église des Dominicains 250 points
On a square of its own, and from outside it is a plain box with a steep roof and next to nothing on the face of it. That is deliberate. Go in and you will find out what the plainness was saving up for. Next door, the old convent is a library holding more than a thousand manuscripts, the oldest of them written before anybody had written down the name Colmar.
Église Saint-Matthieu 250 points
The far east end of the level, and the reason the Grand'Rue takes you so far out. A restoration at the end of the 1990s gave it back its shine and an acoustic good enough that the town's music festival plays in it every year. Come while a concert is on and you get the lot at once.
Hôtel de Ville de Colmar 250 points
Number 48 on the Rue des Clefs, with the Place de la Mairie out front. Over the door, in the triangle at the top, the arms of the town are carved into the stone. Go and look at them: that is the thing I could not fit onto a button.
Maison des Têtes 250 points
On the Rue des Têtes, a short hop from the Dominicans' church. There is a restaurant in there now, and I have been hungry for six centuries, so I approve. Before you go anywhere near the menu, cross the lane and give the front a long stare. I am not telling you why.
Eating
Actual food.
Colmar eats from two directions. From the valley to the west come the cheese, the meat pie and the slow potatoes of the farm inns, where the cows go up to the high pastures every spring. From the Krutenau gardens came the vegetables, carried along the Lauch in flat boats to the covered market, which dates from 1865. Mountain food and garden food, meeting at a small river. I approve of any town whose groceries arrive by boat.
Meat and fish
Tourte de la vallée de Munster
Pork neck minced with bread, onion, garlic and nutmeg, bound with egg and baked between two sheets of puff pastry. It is the first course at the farm inns up the Munster valley. Each farm keeps a few spices to itself, so no two pies agree, and I take that as an invitation.
Sources: Les Nouvelles Gastronomiques, Office de Tourisme de la Vallée de Munster, Association des Fermes Auberges du Haut-Rhin
Roïgabrageldi
Potatoes cut in strips and cooked for two to three hours in farm butter with onion and bacon, served beside smoked pork. The dish goes back to the cowherds, who left the pot on a low flame and went off to mind the herd. Cooking time up there was measured in cows.
Sources: Association des Fermes Auberges du Haut-Rhin, L'Observatoire des Produits du Terroir, JDS
Salade de cervelas
Cervelas sausage sliced thick with strips of gruyère, onion and garlic, dressed in vinaigrette. It is the usual way to open a meal here, and nothing in it goes anywhere near a stove. A salad that is mostly sausage is my kind of salad.
Sources: Pokaa, Visit Alsace (Alsace Destination Tourisme), Le Gourmeur
Vegetarian
Munster
A soft cheese with a washed rind that turns orange as it ripens, named after the town of Munster up the valley. The official description of the smell uses the word powerful. That is the French state being polite.
Ask about the rennet if that matters to you. A farm cheese usually answers the traditional way.
Sources: INAO (Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité)
Bibeleskaes
Fresh white cheese beaten with garlic, shallot and chives, eaten with hot potatoes in their skins. It was the farm supper at the end of a working day, made from whatever was already in the kitchen. The name is Alsatian for chicks' cheese, and no chick was consulted.
It often comes with a slice of smoked ham or bacon on the plate. Ask for it without.
Sources: Je visite l'Alsace, L'Observatoire des Produits du Terroir, Visit Alsace (Alsace Destination Tourisme)
Spaetzle (Pâtes d'Alsace)
Small egg noodles, usually tossed in butter beside something braised. The protected Alsace pasta asks for seven fresh eggs to every kilo of semolina, and a cookbook from 1671 already said no water, only eggs. A noodle with a minimum egg count is a serious noodle.
They often arrive under a meat sauce. Ask for them on their own, with butter or cheese.
Sources: INAO (Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité), Pokaa
Vegan
Two, and both of them are cabbage. Nearly everything the valley and the plain wrote down leans on butter, cream or the pig. The cabbage is the part that stands up without them, fermented or braised, and it was always on the table. Plant kitchens exist in Colmar now, one of them inside the covered market. They simply came long after the recipes.
Choucroute
Shredded white cabbage left to ferment on its own until it turns pale and sour. Winters here were hard, and this is how a garden got through them. The Alsatian name is Sürkrüt, sour cabbage, and the French word is that same name said with a French accent.
On a menu it usually comes garnie, which means under a pile of pork. Ask for the cabbage by itself, and ask what fat it was cooked in.
Sources: INAO (Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité)
Chou rouge aux pommes et marrons
Red cabbage cut fine and braised slowly for about two hours, with sharp apples and whole chestnuts added near the end. Cold weather food, and with mashed potato beside it, a whole meal. I have learned never to argue with Alsace about cabbage.
The old recipes start it in goose fat or lard, and some add bacon. Oil is the stand in they allow. Ask how this kitchen made it.
Sources: Alsace Terroir, Simone Morgenthaler, CIVA
Late breakfast
Cuit Lu Cru come for the one thing: the vegan plates
13 Rue des Écoles
A plant kitchen with its own stand inside the covered market, run by Fabien and Candy Fornier. Hot plates, cold plates and a case of pastries, all of it organic and every bit of it vegan, eaten at wooden tables or carried off. The vegetables still come to the market hall. They just leave it cooked now.
Daytime only. It keeps to the market's hours, and the plates change every day.
Sources: Petit Futé, Pause colmarienne, My Weekend in Alsace
Mokka where locals go
35 Grand'Rue
A long narrow room in what used to be a dry cleaner's, opened in the summer of 2021 by Ambre Monchanin and Pierre Schroeder, who both trained as cooks in Lyon. Buttered bread and jam in the morning, tartines and soup at noon, cake in the afternoon, and the shopping is done at the covered market. I approve of a shop that went from cleaning clothes to getting crumbs on them.
- Mon09:00–18:00
- Tue09:00–18:00
- Wed09:00–18:00
- Thu09:00–18:00
- Fri09:00–18:00
- Sat09:00–18:00
- Sun11:00–18:00
Sunday brunch runs in two sittings and wants a reservation. On other days breakfast stops at a quarter past eleven.
Sources: Le Périscope, Pause colmarienne, My Weekend in Alsace, SeulsTwo
Afternoon coffee
Kitsuné & Tanuki come for the one thing: the tatami room
28 Rue Golbéry
A Japanese tea room on the ground floor of a red brick house, opened in early 2024 by Kevin and Reinier. Three rooms, one Alsatian with bare beams and a regulars' table, one laid with tatami, and a shaded garden terrace. Mochi, dorayaki and Japanese rolled cake come with the tea, and part of the pastry case is vegan. An Alsatian beam over a tatami mat is a very Colmar compromise.
- Monclosed
- Tue11:00–18:00
- Wed09:00–18:00
- Thu09:00–18:00
- Fri09:00–18:00
- Sat09:30–18:00
- Sun09:30–18:00
Closed Monday. On Tuesday it opens at eleven, at the weekend at half past nine.
Sources: Pause colmarienne, Office de Tourisme de Colmar et sa région, My Weekend in Alsace
Tinto where locals go
5 Route de Sélestat
A small café that opened in 2023 on the route de Sélestat, fitted out soft and a little bohemian, with espresso and filter from a Lyon roaster. The kitchen does pancakes and french toast for anyone who came for more than a cup. There is a pink latte on the card. I did not ask what makes it pink.
- Monclosed
- Tueclosed
- Wed09:00–18:00
- Thu09:00–18:00
- Fri09:00–18:00
- Sat09:00–18:00
- Sun10:00–18:00
Closed Monday and Tuesday. Sunday it opens an hour later, at ten.
Sources: European Coffee Trip, Pause colmarienne
Dinner
Au Soleil Levant come for the one thing: the sushi
15 Rue Berthe Molly
Yasuaki Sato came from Yokohama and has cooked Japanese food in Alsace for more than twenty years, with Hui Ling Sato in the room explaining the plates. The sushi and sashimi are cut with real care, and there is a long cooked side of the card for anyone who wants their fish warm or not at all. Twenty years of one knife in one town. I know something about staying put.
Lunch and dinner Wednesday to Saturday, Sunday lunch only. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
Sources: Les Nouvelles Gastronomiques, Gilles Pudlowski, My Weekend in Alsace, Pause colmarienne
La Cocotte de Grand-Mère where locals go
14 Place de l'École
A bistro on the Place de l'École with seven or eight tables and a single sitting in the evening, run by the chef Paul-Edouard Nicolas. The card changes with the day and the season, a little regional and a little Mediterranean, and the prices have no surprises in them. A grandmother's casserole on the sign and a sardine tart on the plate. I like a name that fibs in a friendly way.
- Mon12:00–13:00, 19:00–20:00
- Tue12:00–13:00, 19:00–20:00
- Wed12:00–13:00, 19:00–20:00
- Thu12:00–13:00, 19:00–20:00
- Fri12:00–13:00, 19:00–20:00
- Satclosed
- Sunclosed
Weekdays only, shut Saturday and Sunday. There is one evening sitting and very few tables, so ring ahead and arrive between seven and eight.
Sources: Gault&Millau, My Weekend in Alsace
Checked 13 September 2026.
Name origin
Why it is called Colmar.
Colmar is Latin for a dovecote. The first time this place is written down at all, in 823, it is the fisc of Columbarium: a royal farm of barns, stables, a kitchen, a bakehouse, a poultry yard and one pigeon loft. Colombes and Coulommiers come off the same word. A whole town ended up named after the smallest shed on the property.
Sources: www.tourisme-colmar.com
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Colmar sits just off the big water on purpose. The Roman camp stood nearer the Ill, over at Horbourg, and the Ill kept flooding what was around it, so under the Franks the working centre moved west onto drier ground, onto the fertile loess and river silt. What runs through the middle here is the small one, the Lauch, with houses lined up along both banks. The proper harbour had to go two kilometres north, at the point where the Ill is finally deep enough to carry a boat.
Sources: www.tourisme-colmar.com; www.tourisme-colmar.com; www.colmar.fr
Why then
When the first stone went down.
Nobody founded Colmar. The crown was nomadic: it moved from estate to estate and ate what it found there, and this estate was one of the stops. Then the wording changes. From 1226 the documents no longer call it a domain, they call it a city, a rank Frederick II had granted a few years earlier. Four hundred years to get from one line in somebody else's deed to a rank of its own. I have waited longer for less.
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 823–1226
The Frankish crown, in person. Colmar begins as one of the emperor's own farms, and the court kept coming back to eat it: Charles the Fat called the great men of the empire together here in January 883 and did it again the following February. Around 965 the estate was divided and given away, the upper half to a monastery in what is now Switzerland, the lower half to the bishop of Constance. Nobody asked the farm.
Sources: www.tourisme-colmar.com
- 1226–1679
The Empire, at a distance. As an imperial city Colmar answered to an emperor who was rarely nearby and otherwise ran itself. Rudolf of Habsburg handed it its communal liberties in 1278; by 1360 the government of the town sat with its burghers and their guilds; in 1376 it won the right to strike its own coin. In 1648 the treaty of Münster sent the French administration back out again and confirmed that Colmar still answered to nobody nearer than the emperor. That held for another thirty-one years.
- 1679–1871
France. The treaty of Nijmegen made Colmar a French royal town in 1679, and the crown then got to work on the details. From 1680 the town's own offices had to be shared evenly between the two confessions, although Protestants were still about two thirds of the people living here. That is what being governed from a very long way off looks like from underneath.
- 1871–1918
The German Empire. The treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871 made Alsace German. Colmar stayed the head town of its department but now took its orders from a provincial government in Strasbourg, and from 1883 French was out of the official papers altogether. The name over the door did not change. Everything printed under it did.
Sources: www.tourisme-colmar.com
- 1918–
France again. French soldiers came into Colmar on 18 November 1918, and the town put the date on a square you will walk across. I have now watched this place change hands often enough to see the pattern. The flags change. The gables do not.
The emblem
What the shield means.
The icon is a house with a steep gable, and that is a substitution. Colmar's own shield carries a gold Kolben laid across a field split red and green, and the heralds are fairly sure it is up there for the sound of it rather than the shape: Kolben in German, Columbaria in Latin, near enough for a town seal in 1214. Now try drawing that at the size of a thumbnail. What you actually walk past all day here is timber framing and a pointed gable, so that is what went on the button.
Sources: www.colmar.fr; www.colmar.fr
Emblem: Original artwork for Cobble Gobble — no third-party source
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The shape of this level is a ring that is not there any more. Between 1216 and 1220 the imperial provost Woelflin of Haguenau put the first one round Colmar: two kilometres long, seven to eight metres high, holding nineteen hectares. It had three gates, and you will walk over all three. One stood where the Rue des Boulangers is, one at the Place des Six Montagnes Noires, one on the Grand'Rue. The masonry went piece by piece across the 1700s and 1800s as the town spread out, and a scrap of it is still standing at the Montagne Verte.
Sources: lpc.colmar.tv
The prettiest part of Colmar is the wet part, and it was a working one. Fish caught in the town's own channels were sold along the Quai de la Poissonnerie right through the Middle Ages. Round from there, in the Krutenau, the houses face each other in two rows across the Lauch, which is how that stretch got the name Petite Venise; the people living in them were vine growers, market gardeners and boatmen. A fire took about forty houses out of the fishmongers' quarter in 1706, and the timber framing everybody photographs there now was only brought back into daylight between 1978 and 1981.
Sources: www.colmar.fr
Colmar is the capital of nothing and owns a courthouse the size of one. In 1698 the highest court in Alsace was moved here, and what it was handed was the medieval hall on the Grand'Rue the burghers had been using as their own town hall. By 1771 that had been rebuilt into a palace, and underneath it sit two vaulted chapels stacked one above the other, left from the Augustinian friars who had the ground first. The Rue des Augustins runs along one side of it. The Rue du Conseil Souverain is two minutes off. A town this size does not name streets after a law court unless the law court was the largest thing in it.
Sources: pop.culture.gouv.fr; www.tourisme-colmar.com
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Rue
- The plain word for a street, and here it usually names whoever worked in it. Rue des Boulangers the bakers, Rue des Serruriers the locksmiths, Rue des Tourneurs the turners, Rue des Tisserands the weavers, Rue des Tripiers the tripe dressers. I can read a whole trade directory just by walking.
- Boulevard
- The ring road, and the edge of this level. Boulevard Saint-Pierre, Boulevard du Champ de Mars, Boulevard du Général Leclerc. When you hit one of these you are at the outer rim of the Old Town and the dots stop. Nothing out there for me.
- Place
- A square, generally named after whatever was sold or stood on it. Place du Marché aux Fruits, Place de l'Ancienne Douane, Place des Dominicains, Place de l'École. Naming a square after fruit is exactly the right instinct.
- Passage
- A way cut through a block rather than round it. Passage Saint-Martin, Passage de la Tour Verte, Passage du Niderhoff, and Passage Monoprix, which is named after a supermarket and has dots on it all the same.
- Cour
- A courtyard that counts as a street. Cour Waldner-Stephan, Cour des Seigneurs de Hattstatt, and one that is simply called Cour. Easy to walk straight past, and every one of them has dots down it.
- -hof
- German bones under the French names. Hof is a yard. Weinhof, Rue Schaefferhof, Passage du Niderhoff. Alsace never picked one language, and the street signs gave up asking it to.
- de la Truite
- Colmar puts animals on the corners. Rue de la Truite the trout, Rue du Canard the duck, Rue de la Cigogne the stork, Rue de la Corneille the crow, Rue de l'Ours the bear, Rue du Mouton the sheep, Rue de la Grenouillère the frog pond. Two of those are lunch.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Colmar in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 108streets
- 1,132dots
- 17.5km of street
- 22.0km on foot
- 6.5hours at a stroll
Nearby
Old Towns close to this one.
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.