France
Colmar
Candy-coloured façades reflected in canals so still they look like someone poured paint on glass.
The colours are improbable. Pink, pale blue, mint green, butter yellow — half-timbered façades painted in washed-out pastels and reflected in canals so calm the reflection looks more solid than the building above. Colmar in France is Alsace distilled into a single old town, the timber frames leaning at angles that predate the idea of plumb lines.
Colmar sits on the Alsatian wine route in the Upper Rhine plain, sheltered by the Vosges mountains which make it one of the driest towns in France, with less than 600 millimetres of rain annually. The Petite Venise quarter — a canal district of fishermen's and tanners' houses — dates from the 14th century and remains navigable by flat-bottomed boat. The Unterlinden Museum, housed in a 13th-century Dominican convent, holds Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, painted between 1512 and 1516, considered one of the masterworks of northern European art. Colmar was the birthplace of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty — the house museum and a quarter-scale replica stand in the city. The town's half-timbered architecture spans the 14th to 17th centuries, concentrated along the Rue des Marchands and the Place de l'Ancienne Douane.
Couple
A flat-bottomed boat through Petite Venise, the painted houses sliding past at eye level, then wine tasting in a cellar that's been pressing Riesling since the 17th century. The town is built for unhurried days together.
Family
Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty connection gives children a recognisable anchor. The colourful houses are a walking picture book, the canals add boat rides, and the Christmas market in December layers in gingerbread and mulled wine.
- The Petite Venise canal district looks like someone lifted a Flemish painting and dropped it into Alsace.
- The Unterlinden Museum holds Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece — one of the most powerful paintings in European art.
- Winemaker cellars in the old town offer tastings of Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris within walking distance.
- Timber-framed houses are painted in washed-out pinks, blues, and yellows that photograph well in any weather.
Baeckeoffe — a slow-baked casserole of three meats marinated overnight in Alsatian Riesling.
Kugelhopf — a yeasted crown cake studded with almonds and dusted with icing sugar.
Rye
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Temple paint vivid after thirty-three centuries, concealing an underground granite chamber that still puzzles archaeologists.
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