Colmar and Mulhouse

Before you go — three markets, one railway line

Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse sit in a row down the Alsace plain, half an hour apart by train, and in December all three run a Christmas market. Most visitors do Strasbourg and go home. That is a reasonable choice and it is not the only one.

We did them in sequence over three days — Mulhouse on 8 December 2024, Colmar on the 9th, Strasbourg on the 9th and 10th — and the 13 photographs on this page are 7 from the first and 6 from the second.

• Strasbourg is the famous one and deserves it. It has its own page — read it here — and it is the one to choose if you are choosing only one.
• Colmar is the pretty one, and the most photographed small town in France for good reason.
• Mulhouse is the one nobody goes to, which is both its drawback and its argument.
• The train makes this easy. You do not need a car for any of it, and parking in Colmar in December is its own kind of misery.

Colmar — the pretty one, and the crowded one

Timbered houses in colors, canals through the middle at Petite Venise, and several separate market squares rather than one. At blue hour it is as good as the photographs suggest. In the middle of a December Saturday it is close to impassable.

• Go at dusk, not midday. Our best Colmar frame is a timbered corner at blue hour, and the difference between that and the same street at two in the afternoon is the difference between a visit and a scrum.
• There is more than one market. They are spread across the old town and the covered market hall — walking between them is the evening, and the quieter ones are away from the center.
• The Unterlinden is here, and the Isenheim Altarpiece is in it. We have not been, so we will not describe it — but if the weather turns, that is where to go, and it would be the reason to come in a month without a market.

Mulhouse — the one with a reason rather than a look

Mulhouse is an industrial city and looks it in places. The market sits on the Place de la Réunion in front of the Temple Saint-Étienne, and in December the church front is floodlit red against the evening, which is the single most striking thing we photographed in Alsace.

• It is a fraction as busy as Colmar. Same region, same month, same food, and room to stand. If Colmar sounds exhausting, this is the answer rather than the compromise.
• The red-lit church is the photograph. Three of our seven Mulhouse frames are that building and it deserves all three.
• The market has a printed fabric each year, an Alsace tradition, and the stalls sell it. It is the one souvenir here that is actually of the place.
• The Cité de l'Automobile is in Mulhouse — the Schlumpf collection, one of the great car museums in the world, and the French railway museum is here too. We have done neither, so this is a pointer rather than a recommendation. If somebody in your party liked the Porsche museum in Stuttgart, this is the other one.

Which of the three, if you only get one evening?

• First time in Alsace: Strasbourg. Biggest, oldest, best, and the cathedral is worth the trip on its own.
• Photographs are the point: Colmar, at dusk, on a weekday.
• Crowds are the problem: Mulhouse. It is the least pretty and the most comfortable, and the red church at night is worth more than its reputation.
• Two evenings: Strasbourg and one other. Three markets in three days is a lot of mulled wine and very similar stalls, and we would not plan it that way again.

How long?

An evening each, and sleep in Strasbourg or Colmar. Ours were 8 and 9 December 2024, as part of a longer market run that started in Freiburg and ended in Paris.

Alsace in December is a short-day region — dark by half past four — so the markets start early and so should you. Daylight is for the trains and the museums.