Colmar Self-Guided Walking Audio Tour

The walk stop by stop: St Martin's Church, Unterlinden, Little Venice, the Bartholdi Museum

10 stops · about 33 min walking · start: St Martin's Church · finish: Bartholdi Museum

St Martin's Church, with its roof of coloured tiles, is where the narration opens. A short loop north takes in the Unterlinden Museum, housed in a former convent, and the Municipal Theatre beside it, before the Parc du Champ de Mars and the Roesselmann Fountain bring you back south. The second half belongs to the water: Little Venice and the Fishmongers' Quarter line the Lauch, the Old Customs House stands just beyond them, and St Matthew's Church is the last stop before the Bartholdi Museum, where the walk ends. The app lets you start elsewhere or change the order, and no stop requires a ticket.

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1. 

   1St Martin's ChurchStart

   Colmar's largest church was built in Gothic style from 1234 to around 1365 and is often called the cathedral, although it is a collegiate church. Look up at its 71-metre tower: a fire in 1572 destroyed the spire, and the Renaissance cap added the following year is still there, above a roof of colourful tiles.

2. 

   2Unterlinden Museum

   The museum occupies a 13th-century convent of Dominican nuns and opened to the public in 1853. Its most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516, and since 2015 the museum has a new wing designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

3. 

   3Municipal Theatre

   Colmar's municipal theatre was built in 1847–1849 by the architect Louis-Michel Boltz on part of the old Unterlinden convent and opened in March 1849. Behind its classical five-bay façade is a rounded auditorium with three tiers of galleries in the Italian tradition.

4. 

   4Parc du Champ de Mars

   This large, shady park lies just outside the old town. In it stands the fountain of Admiral Armand Joseph Bruat, a naval officer born in Colmar, made by Auguste Bartholdi and inaugurated in 1864; its sandstone figures of the continents were destroyed in 1940, and the bronze admiral has stood on a new basin since 1958.

5. 

   5Roesselmann Fountain

   Auguste Bartholdi made this fountain on Place des Six Montagnes Noires, inaugurated in 1888, in honour of Jean Roesselmann, the provost who died defending Colmar in 1262. According to legend, Roesselmann slipped back into the town hidden in a barrel, and Bartholdi is said to have given him the face of the mayor of the time.

6. 

   6Little Venice

   Little Venice (Petite Venise) is the stretch of the Lauch river where colourful half-timbered houses stand right at the water's edge. From the bridges you get the classic view of the houses reflected in the river, and small flat-bottomed boats take visitors along the water.

7. 

   7Fishmongers' Quarter (Quai de la Poissonnerie)

   The Quai de la Poissonnerie takes its name from the fishermen and boatmen who lived and worked here, organised in a powerful guild, and sold their catch beside the Lauch. Its timber-framed houses were restored in the late 20th century and are now among the most photographed in Colmar.

8. 

   8Old Customs House (Koïfhus)

   The Old Customs House, also called the Koïfhus, was built in 1480 as the place where goods passing through Colmar were checked and taxed. In front of it stands another Bartholdi fountain from 1898, honouring Lazarus von Schwendi, who according to legend brought the Tokay vine to Alsace.

9. 

   9St Matthew's Church

   St Matthew's Church is the only surviving part of a Franciscan convent from around 1290, with the wide, plain nave typical of the mendicant orders. It has been Protestant since 1575; in 1715 the choir was walled off for Catholic use, and the dividing wall was only removed in 1987.

10. 

    10Bartholdi MuseumFinish

    The museum occupies the house where Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty in New York, was born in 1834. The family home was left to the town and opened as a museum in 1922, and in the courtyard stands his bronze group Les Grands Soutiens du monde.