Hunspach

Hunspach is a village of about 700 people in the far north of Alsace, 10 km south of Wissembourg and close to the German border. It is one of the Most Beautiful Villages of France, and in 2020 it was voted the favourite village of the French in the national television poll.

It looks different from the Alsace of the tourist posters, and the difference is the point.

Why it is white

Southern Alsace paints its timber frames in ochre, blue and red. Northern Alsace does not: here the houses are whitewashed, with the beams left dark against plain white render, and the effect is austere rather than decorative.

Two other local features:

• Bulging window panes. The old glass is convex — blown, then bellied outward — which lets those inside see the street while those outside see only reflection. Hunspach has more of these surviving than anywhere else in France.
• The farm layout. These are working farmsteads, not town houses: the house faces the street with the barn and byre behind, around a courtyard, with a low white fence and a garden in front.

The whole village is Protestant, which is also why it looks the way it does — the Reformation came to this corner and stayed.

The village

One long street with the houses set back behind their gardens, a Protestant church, a well and a wash-house. It takes half an hour to walk, there is no monument, and that is the whole experience: an intact eighteenth-century farming village that has not been turned into anything else.

There are no souvenir shops. There is a wine grower and a couple of guest houses.

The Maginot Line

The reason to make a day of it. The strongest section of the Maginot Line runs through this corner of Alsace, and two of its major works are within fifteen minutes:

• Ouvrage de Schoenenbourg — the largest fort open to the public in Alsace, 3 km from Hunspach. Thirty metres underground, with a kilometre of galleries, an electric railway, barracks, kitchens and gun turrets that still rise and turn. It was shelled heavily in 1940 and never taken.
• Four à Chaux, Lembach — another substantial work, 20 minutes away

Schoenenbourg is cold underground whatever the weather outside — bring a jacket even in August.

Getting to Hunspach

• By train — the line from Strasbourg to Wissembourg stops at Hunspach, about 50 minutes. This is unusual for a village of this size and it makes a car-free visit possible.
• By car — 50 minutes from Strasbourg on the D263. Park at the edge of the village.

See parking in France.

Around Hunspach

• Wissembourg — 10 km north, the northern end of the wine route
• Seebach and Oberseebach — the neighbouring villages, in the same white style and with almost no visitors at all
• Château de Fleckenstein — a castle carved into a sandstone crag in the Northern Vosges, 30 minutes west
• Betschdorf and Soufflenheim — the pottery villages, 25 km south: grey salt-glazed stoneware at one, glazed earthenware at the other

What to eat

Northern Alsatian, which is heartier and more German than the wine-route version: presskopf, fleischschnacka, potato salad, and beer as often as wine. See the cooking of Alsace.

When to go

May to September, when the gardens in front of the houses are at their best — they are as much of the picture as the timber. The village is quiet all year and there is nothing to queue for.

See Alsace.

Photo credits

Some photographs on this page come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences:

• Village street — Ignis, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Farmhouse on the Rue Principale — Ralph Hammann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Weather in Hunspach

Updated: 24 September 2026