Kaysersberg, France
Kaysersberg is the kind of village that makes people rearrange a trip. A single pedestrian lane runs the length of the old town between rows of half-timbered houses, a fast mountain stream cuts through the middle of it, and the broken tower of a medieval castle stands on the ridge above, framed by vineyards. In December the lane fills with market stalls and the place becomes one of the most popular Christmas destinations in eastern France.
The village sits about eleven kilometers northwest of Colmar, where the Weiss valley opens out of the Vosges foothills onto the Alsatian plain. Wooded hills rise directly behind the rooftops, close enough that the village feels tucked into the mountains rather than set out on the flat. The church tower is the tallest thing in it.
Getting There
Kaysersberg is a stop on the Route des Vins d'Alsace, the wine road running north to south through the vineyard villages, and it is usually visited as part of a day trip taking in two or three towns rather than as a destination on its own. Guided coach tours run from Colmar through the Christmas season, public buses link the villages, and driving is straightforward, though December parking requires patience.
The Main Street
Nearly all the activity concentrates on the one lane. The buildings along it are genuine rather than reconstructed, most from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with steep tile roofs, painted plaster, exposed timber frames, and carved date stones set over the doorways. Shopfronts are worked into the ground floors without much altering the facades above them.
The timber framing is worth looking at closely. Alsatian carpenters used curved and crossed braces as decoration as well as structure, and the patterns change from house to house along the street. Corner posts are often carved, and the upper floors overhang the ones below in the medieval fashion, narrowing the strip of sky over the lane.
Other houses are plastered over and painted, with green or white shutters and window boxes on every sill. The palette across the village runs to cream, ochre, dusty pink and pale blue, and the effect is uniform without being repetitive, since no two facades are quite the same width or height.
In December the decoration goes on over all of it. Garlands of fir are hung along the window ledges and around the doorways, wreaths go up on the shutters, and lights are strung between the buildings across the lane. Most of it is greenery rather than plastic, which suits the age of the houses.
The Christmas Market
The market occupies wooden chalets set down the middle of the street. The stalls sell ornaments, carved wooden toys, candles, textiles, pottery, local sausage and cheese, honey, jam, and a great deal of pastry. It is smaller and less commercial than the markets at Strasbourg or Colmar, which is part of why people come.
Gingerbread hearts hang in rows at several stands, iced with names and messages, in the same tradition found across the Rhine in Germany. They are more decoration than food, bought to hang on a tree or a wall, and they photograph better than they taste.
Other stalls sell dolls and soft toys in Alsatian dress, the girls in the wide black headdress that became the regional emblem in the nineteenth century. The white stork turns up everywhere alongside them. Storks nest on Alsatian roofs and church towers, nearly died out in the region by the 1970s, and were brought back by a deliberate reintroduction program.
The souvenir racks carry the same imagery: postcards of the village in every season, storks on chimneys, vineyards in autumn color, and the villages of the wine road photographed from the air.
Mulled wine is the standard defense against the cold and is sold from stands throughout the market. The Alsatian version is red wine heated with apple cider, cinnamon sticks, cloves and orange rind, served in a cup that stays warm in your hands for the length of the street. The crowd around the stands is thickest in the last hour of daylight.
Bread, Pretzels and Kougelhopf
Bakeries do heavy business through the market weeks, and their signs advertise the two things people come in for. Pretzels are sold plain, salted, or split and filled, and kougelhopf is the regional cake, a fluted ring of yeasted dough with raisins and almonds, baked in a glazed earthenware mold.
Inside, the counters hold both French and German traditions at once. Baguettes sit beside dense dark loaves with thick crusts and nuts baked through them, and the pastry case runs from fruit tarts to Christmas biscuits, the small spiced bredele made in Alsatian kitchens by the tin through December.
Two Countries, One Village
The crowd is mostly French. A great many visitors come out from Paris for the markets, and there is a large German contingent as well, since the Rhine and the German border are about thirty-five kilometers east. The two languages are audible in equal measure along the street.
That mix is not an accident of tourism. Alsace changed hands repeatedly between France and Germany. Germany took the region after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and held it until it returned to France at the end of the First World War, and the German place names stayed through all of it.
Kaysersberg means emperor's mountain. The name refers to the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, who acquired the site in 1227 to control the Weiss valley route through the mountains toward Lorraine, and the village grew up under the castle he garrisoned there.
The Castle and the Weiss
What survives of that period is the castle keep on the ridge, a round tower on the Schlossberg reached by a short uphill walk from the main lane. It is a ruin rather than a restored castle, open and free to climb, and the view from the top takes in the roofs, the stream, and the vineyard slopes running back toward the plain.
The stream is the Weiss, running down out of the Vosges and straight through the middle of the village. In December it comes through fast and full, loud enough to hear from the lane, with bare branches over it and the backs of the houses standing directly on the bank.
A fortified bridge of 1514 crosses it, one of the few of its type left in Alsace, with a covered walkway and a small oratory built into the structure. Sections of the old town wall still run along the water, and the walk along the bank is the quietest part of the village on a market day.
From the bank the houses step down to the water on stone footings, with the valley opening upstream toward the hills. It is the view most visitors miss, because it is thirty seconds off the main street and the main street is where the stalls are.
Churches and Landmarks
The parish church of Sainte-Croix is worth stepping into for its Romanesque doorway, carved in the thirteenth century with the Coronation of the Virgin in the tympanum above a pair of columned jambs. Inside is a carved and painted altarpiece dated 1518. The town hall on the main lane is a Renaissance building of 1604 with an arcaded ground floor and an oriel window.
Albert Schweitzer
Kaysersberg's best-known native is Albert Schweitzer, born here in 1875, the organist, theologian and physician who founded the hospital at Lambaréné in Gabon and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. His birthplace on the main street is now a small museum covering his life and work.
Beyond the Market Season
The village is busy year-round and not only at Christmas. Spring and early autumn bring walkers onto the marked trails through the vineyards, and the cellars along the road are open for tasting. Kaysersberg was voted the Village Préféré des Français in 2017, which did nothing to reduce the crowds, and since 2016 it has been part of the merged commune of Kaysersberg Vignoble with neighboring Kientzheim and Sigolsheim.
Most people pair Kaysersberg with the other wine villages north of it. Ribeauvillé sits beneath three ruined hilltop castles and holds a medieval-themed Christmas market. Riquewihr, walled and almost untouched by the Second World War, is generally reckoned the most beautiful village on the wine road. Between them stands Haut-Koenigsbourg, the great hilltop fortress rebuilt at the start of the twentieth century and now among the most visited monuments in France. All three, along with Colmar itself, fit comfortably into a single day.
