Riquewihr travel guide

Riquewihr is the most famous village on the Alsace wine route and, on most days, the most crowded. It survived the wars almost untouched, so what stands inside the walls is a complete sixteenth-century wine village: painted houses, carved beams, oriel windows, a cobbled main street climbing to a gate tower.

It is one of the Most Beautiful Villages of France, and it is 15 km north of Colmar.

Why it looks like this

Riquewihr belonged to the counts of Württemberg from 1324 until the Revolution — a German possession inside Alsace — and it grew rich on Riesling. The double walls went up in the thirteenth century and were extended in 1500. The village escaped the Thirty Years’ War lightly and came through 1944 without the shelling that flattened neighbouring towns.

The result is a place where the ordinary houses are dated: look above the doors and you will find 1535, 1561, 1601 carved into the lintels, along with the tools of the trade of whoever built them.

What to see

The Dolder

The gate tower of 1291 at the top of the village, 25 m high, with six storeys and the original defensive works — portcullis grooves, murder holes, the lot. It houses a small local museum and you can climb it for the view down over the roofs and out to the vineyards.

Tour des Voleurs

The Thieves’ Tower, the village prison, with the torture chamber preserved and a winegrower’s house attached. Grim and interesting in equal measure.

The main street

Rue du Général de Gaulle runs from the town hall up to the Dolder, and it is the village. Look for the Maison Liebrich of 1535 with its wooden galleries round a courtyard, the Maison Preiss-Zimmer, the Maison Kiener of 1574, and the merchants’ houses with the pulley beams still in the gables.

Step off it. The lanes either side — Rue des Juifs, the Cour des Bergers — are empty while the main street is solid with people.

The ramparts

Both rings survive in part, and a path runs round the outside under the walls with the vineyards on the other side. Ten minutes, free, and almost nobody does it.

The wine

Riquewihr is Riesling country and has two grands crus above it, Schoenenbourg and Sporen — the Schoenenbourg was praised in writing as early as the sixteenth century. The village is full of tasting rooms; Hugel and Dopff have been making wine here since the seventeenth century.

A marked path runs up into the vines from the top of the village — 45 minutes round, and the best view of Riquewihr is from up there looking down.

Shopping

Riquewihr is dense with souvenir shops, and much of what is sold is generic. What is actually local: wine from the growers, kougelhopf moulds in glazed pottery, storks in every possible form, and the Christmas decorations, which are made and sold here all year.

Getting to Riquewihr

• By car — the practical option, on the wine route between Colmar and Ribeauvillé. Park in the paid car parks outside the walls; the village itself is pedestrian.
• By bus — services from Colmar, but infrequent. Check the return time before you go: getting out is easier than getting back.
• By train — there is no station. The nearest are Colmar and Sélestat.

See parking in France.

When to go — and the crowds

Riquewihr takes around two million visitors a year into a village of 1,200 people. That is the single most important fact for planning:

• Come early or stay late. Before 10 in the morning and after 6 in the evening the village is a different place — and the evening light on the painted fronts is the reason to stay.
• Stay the night. The coach parties leave; the people staying in the village get it to themselves.
• Avoid December weekends unless the Christmas market is why you came. Traffic queues down the vineyard roads, cars park on the tracks between the vines, and you walk the last half-kilometre.
• September and October are the harvest, and the best compromise between weather and crowds.

Around Riquewihr

• Hunawihr — 2 km, with its fortified church and far fewer people
• Ribeauvillé — 5 km, larger, with three castles above it
• Kaysersberg — 10 km south
• Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg — 20 minutes, the great restored castle on the ridge
• Colmar — 15 km, and the natural base for the whole route

See Alsace and the cooking of Alsace.

Weather in Riquewihr

Updated: 2 September 2026