Eguisheim travel guide

Eguisheim is 6 km south of Colmar on the Alsace wine route, and it has an unusual shape: the village is built in concentric rings around the castle at its centre, so its streets curve back on themselves instead of running straight.

It was voted the favourite village of the French in 2013 and it belongs to the Most Beautiful Villages of France. It is also, by common agreement, the best-kept village in Alsace — the flower displays have won the national competition repeatedly.

The rings

The plan is the point. An octagonal castle was built in the eighth century; the village grew around it in circles as successive walls were thrown out, and the ramparts were later built over rather than demolished — so the outer ring of houses is the wall, with the lane running round inside it.

Walk the Rempart Sud and Rempart Nord, the two curving streets that follow the old defences. This takes twenty minutes and it is the whole experience: painted timber frames in ochre, blue, pink and green, oriel windows, courtyards with the wine press in them, and geraniums on everything.

Pope Leo IX

Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsbourg was born in the castle here in 1002 and became Pope Leo IX in 1049 — a reforming pope, later canonised, and the last pope born in what is now France. The neo-Romanesque chapel in the middle of the village, inside the castle courtyard, was built in his honour in the nineteenth century and holds a relic.

The village makes a good deal of this, and the octagonal castle wall around the chapel is the oldest thing standing in Eguisheim.

The three castles

On the ridge directly above the village stand three ruined keeps in a row — Dagsbourg, Wahlenbourg and Weckmund, the Trois Châteaux, built by rival branches of the same family in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and destroyed in the fourteenth. They are the silhouette of Eguisheim and visible from half of Alsace.

A marked path climbs to them from the village through the vines: about 45 minutes up, steep at the end, with the whole Rhine plain and the Black Forest behind it from the top. Free and always open.

The wine

Eguisheim claims to be where Alsatian viticulture began — vines were recorded here in the seventh century — and it has two grands crus above it, Eichberg and Pfersigberg. Both are on limestone facing south-east, and both are known for Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris with weight to them.

The village is dense with growers, several of them well-known names, and most take visitors without an appointment. There is a marked vineyard trail — one of the first in Alsace, laid out in 1970 — with panels explaining the soils.

What to eat

Alsatian, and the winstubs here are good: tarte flambée from a wood oven, baeckeoffe, choucroute, munster from the valley over the ridge. See the cooking of Alsace.

Getting to Eguisheim

• By car — 10 minutes from Colmar. Park in the car parks outside the village; the rings are pedestrian and were not built for cars. See parking in France.
• By bus — line 208 from Colmar, but sparse, and the last return is early. Check it before you set out — this is the standard trap on the wine route.
• By bicycle — the cycle route from Colmar takes about half an hour on the flat, and is the pleasantest way to arrive.
• By train — no station; Colmar is the nearest.

Around Eguisheim

• Husseren-les-Châteaux — the highest village on the wine route, just above, and the start of the shortest path to the three castles
• Turckheim — 10 km north, with the night watchman
• Rouffach — 12 km south, and almost empty
• Gueberschwihr and Pfaffenheim — the next wine villages down
• Colmar — 6 km

When to go

Eguisheim is small and popular, so the timing rule from the rest of the route applies doubly: early morning or evening. Summer afternoons are shoulder to shoulder on the ramparts. September and October give the harvest and the colour; December brings a small Christmas market in the castle courtyard.

See Alsace.

Weather in Eguisheim

Updated: 3 September 2026