Explorer Colmar

The Unterlinden Museum occupies a 13th-century Dominican convent and opened to the public in 1853. Around its Gothic cloister it shows Upper Rhine art of the 15th and 16th centuries, including Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece in the former convent church, while a 2015 extension by Herzog & de Meuron holds the modern collection.

St Martin's Church is a Gothic collegiate church built of Vosges sandstone between 1234 and about 1365 on the site of earlier churches. Often called the cathedral, it held that role only briefly after the Revolution. It has a coloured tiled roof, a 71 m tower with a lantern added after a fire in 1572, an ambulatory and a Baroque organ case of 1755.

The Musée Bartholdi occupies the Colmar birthplace of the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, left to the town by his widow in 1907 and opened as a museum in 1922. It shows his models, drawings and paintings, including studies for the Statue of Liberty and the Lion of Belfort, and his bronze group Les Grands Soutiens du Monde stands in the courtyard.

The Toy Museum of Colmar opened in 1993 in a former neighbourhood cinema on Rue Vauban and has been run by the city since 2024. More than 1,000 toys from the 19th century to today fill three floors, from old teddy bears and dolls to Barbie, Playmobil, robots and video games, and a model railway runs across the whole second floor.

The Koïfhus, Colmar's former customs house, was built in 1480 on the Grand-Rue and extended in later centuries. Goods were stored and taxed on its ground floor, while the upper hall hosted the Decapolis, the league of ten Alsatian imperial towns. Its Gothic and Renaissance facades and glazed tile roof are seen from the street.

Little Venice is the part of the Krutenau quarter where the Lauch river runs between half-timbered houses, most built between the 14th and 18th centuries. Market gardeners once brought vegetables by flat-bottomed boat to the Quai de la Poissonnerie; today the stretch from the covered market to the Saint-Pierre bridge is seen from its quays, bridges or small boats.