Pfister House

The Maison Pfister is one of the most photographed buildings in Colmar, a small house on the Rue des Marchands, in the middle of the old town, that shows in a few square metres what Alsatian Renaissance architecture looked like. It was built in 1537 for Ludwig Scherer, a hatter who came from Besançon and had made his fortune in Colmar, and it was designed to display his prosperity. It later took the name of the Pfister family, who owned it in the nineteenth century.

The house has several features that make it stand out on a street of half-timbered buildings. The most noticeable is the corner oriel, a tall projecting bay with a polygonal shape and a slate roof, that rises above the street and gives the house a vertical emphasis. A wooden gallery with carved balustrades runs along the upper floor of the courtyard side, and the stone and wood of the structure carry decorative carving. The façade is covered in painted decoration, in bright colours of ochre, red, green and blue, which show scenes from the Bible and portraits of Roman emperors in the Renaissance fashion, a way of showing the owner's learning and taste. The paintings have been restored and repainted over the centuries, so the colours that we see today are a mixture of old work and later renewal. The attribution of the original designs is uncertain.

Like many houses of its type, the building was both a home and a place of business, and the ground floor was used as a shop. The Maison Pfister is a private building and the interior is not generally open to visitors, so the pleasure of a visit is in studying it from the street. It can be seen at any time, free of charge, and the best light for the colours is in the morning or on a bright afternoon. The visit takes only a few minutes, but it is a good place to stop on a walk to look at the details of the carving and painting.

The surrounding streets are full of similar buildings. A short walk from the house, the Maison des Têtes, built in 1609, is covered in more than a hundred carved faces and grotesque masks, and the Koïfhus, the old customs house, stands at the end of the street. The Collégiale Saint-Martin is the town's main church, a Gothic building with a tall tower, and the Rue des Marchands leads into the pedestrian lanes of the old centre. The Little Venice quarter, with its canals and pastel houses, and the House of the Tanners, a row of tall houses along the river, are close to the Colmar Market, and the Musée Unterlinden, which holds the Isenheim Altarpiece, one of the greatest works of German Renaissance painting, is just a few minutes away.

A walk around Colmar's old town, taking in the Maison Pfister, takes about two hours. The town is especially attractive in December, when the Christmas markets fill the squares, and in the early morning in summer, when the streets are quiet. The house suits architecture lovers, photographers and visitors to the wine route of Alsace.