Barr

Barr is a wine town of about 7,000 on the northern half of the Alsace wine route, 30 km south of Strasbourg at the foot of Mont Sainte-Odile.

It is bigger and less decorated than the villages either side of it, and it has two things they do not: a railway station and enough growers to make a serious afternoon of tasting.

The town

The centre is a square with the Hôtel de Ville of 1640 on it — Renaissance, with a loggia and a wooden balcony under geraniums — and streets of tall winegrowers’ houses running off it.

The square itself is the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, paved and set around a large fountain. The town hall was built in 1640–41 as the residence of a bailiff representing Strasbourg; it became Barr’s town hall only after the Revolution. Its main front is arcaded, and at the back a double staircase looks onto the courtyard.

Next to it stands the Greffe Seigneurial, a half-timbered building with a domed roof. More half-timbered houses, built between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, line Rue de la Stey, Rue Taufflieb, Rue des Cigognes and Rue du Collège, and the presbytery on Rue de l’Église. A handful of houses break the pattern with Belle Époque fronts instead — one with a fine balcony on Rue du Collège, another on Rue du Dr Sultzer.

The tourist office has a map of a signposted walking route through the town, worth picking up, since it is easy to miss the best of the centre otherwise — including Grand Rue, the main shopping street, which the marked route touches only briefly. Grand Rue’s houses are some of the town’s best and it is worth walking the length of the street before rejoining the signposted way.

Rue Neuve, despite the name, is the oldest street in the old town: a narrow lane of painted houses on both sides, rebuilt after a fire in 1678 destroyed much of Barr.

• La Folie Marco — an eighteenth-century mansion built by a bailiff, kept as a house museum with its furniture, panelling and wine cellar. The name says what the neighbours thought of the expense.
• Église Saint-Martin — Protestant, with a Romanesque tower
• Barr’s Catholic parish church is also dedicated to Saint-Martin, the same saint as the Protestant church
• The old tanneries along the stream, from when Barr made leather as well as wine

La Folie Marco’s garden has been replanted to show how a nobleman’s garden of the period looked, and the house museum is given over to Alsatian furniture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The wine

Barr is sometimes called the wine capital of Bas-Rhin.

Barr’s grand cru is the Kirchberg de Barr, on limestone directly above the town, known for Riesling and Gewurztraminer with weight. The town has been a wine centre since the Middle Ages and there are growers on most streets.

The Fête des Vendanges in early October is one of the oldest harvest festivals in Alsace, with a procession and the new wine.

See the wines of Alsace.

Mont Sainte-Odile

The abbey on its cliff at 763 m is 20 minutes above the town and is the spiritual centre of Alsace: founded by Saint Odile, daughter of the duke, in the seventh century, and a place of pilgrimage ever since. The terrace looks over the entire Rhine plain.

Around the summit runs the Mur Païen — the Pagan Wall — a dry-stone rampart 10 km long and up to 3 m high, built of blocks joined by wooden tenons. Nobody is certain who built it or when; estimates range from the Celtic period to the early Middle Ages. It is one of the genuine archaeological mysteries of France and you can walk along it.

Getting to Barr

• By train — on the line from Strasbourg, about 40 minutes, running on to Sélestat. This is what makes Barr useful: it is a wine-route base you can reach and leave without a car.
• By car — 40 minutes from Strasbourg. See parking in France.
• On foot — the vineyard path to Mittelbergheim takes about half an hour and is the pleasantest short walk on the route.

Around Barr

• Mittelbergheim — 2 km, stone rather than timber, and one of the most beautiful villages in France
• Andlau — 3 km, with a Romanesque abbey church whose carved frieze is among the best in Alsace
• Mont Sainte-Odile — 20 minutes up
• Obernai — 8 km north, also on the railway
• Dambach-la-Ville — 12 km south, walled and full of vintners’ houses
• Le Hohwald and Champ du Feu — a bus runs from Barr through Mittelbergheim and Andlau up into the Vosges, past the Parc Alsace Aventure treetop adventure park, to Le Hohwald and on to Champ du Feu

When to go

May to October, and early October for the harvest festival. Barr is a working town rather than a picture, which means it stays open and alive out of season when the smaller villages shut — a real advantage in March or November.

See Alsace and the cooking of Alsace.

Nearby

Other places on this site within easy reach, as the crow flies:

• Châtenois — 16 km
• Sélestat — 17 km
• Haut-Koenigsbourg — 19 km
• Bergheim — 23 km
• Ribeauvillé — 26 km
• Hunawihr — 27 km

Weather in Barr

This page in Russian: Barr (Барр)

Updated: 13 October 2026