Painted half-timbered Alsace
Colmar
Timber-framed houses in pink, yellow, blue and green lean over small canals in eastern France.
Why Colmar is half-timber rose
Colmar is a town in Alsace, near the German border. Its old centre escaped major damage in the wars of the 20th century. The houses are half-timbered: a frame of dark wooden beams filled in with plaster. The plaster panels are painted in strong pastels, a different one for each house, and window boxes are filled with red geraniums. The quarter along the Lauch river is known as Little Venice, and the former fishmongers' quay has the best-known row. A popular story says each colour once showed the trade of the owner, such as blue for fishermen; there is little evidence for it. At Christmas the town is covered in lights.
#E08C8CTimber brown#5B4033Plaster yellow#F2D06BShutter blue#5F8FC2Geranium red#D1342BValues are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Colmar" on Wikipedia. If you know Colmar and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
All colour cities
🇫🇷 The lemon townMentonThe last French town before Italy, with an old quarter in ochre and yellow and a famous lemon festival.
🇫🇷 La Ville RoseToulouseThe pink city of south-west France, built of flat rosy bricks, once rich on a blue dye plant.
🇫🇷 The ochre villageRoussillonA Provençal hill village built on, and painted with, cliffs of red, orange and yellow ochre.
🇮🇳 The Pink CityJaipurThe walled city wears a dusty terracotta pink, first painted on for a royal visit in 1876 and kept ever since.
🇮🇳 Town of Holi coloursVrindavanFor Holi the temple town of Krishna's childhood fills with clouds of pink, yellow and green powder.
🇧🇩 Rickshaw art capitalDhakaHundreds of thousands of cycle rickshaws carry hand-painted panels of film stars, birds and flowers.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Vrindavan In: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source
- Dhaka Bd: Tanweer drmc, Public domain, source
- Menton Fr: Jpgross, Public domain, source
- Toulouse Fr: Tonio94 ( talk · contribs ), CC BY-SA 2.5, source
- Roussillon Fr: Hawobo at German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, source