Soultz-Haut-Rhin

Soultz-Haut-Rhin is a town of about 7,500 on the Alsace wine route, at the mouth of the Florival valley 3 km from Guebwiller and 20 km from Mulhouse.

The name comes from the salt springs — Sulz — that made the place worth settling. It belonged to the prince-abbots of Murbach, kept its walls until the nineteenth century, and has an old centre of stone and half-timbered houses that most visitors on the wine route drive past.

The earliest record of the settlement is a charter of 667, in which Adalric, duke of Alsace and father of Saint Odile, granted land here to the convent of Ebersmünster. Much of the old town keeps its Renaissance layout, with the exception of the Place de la République, laid out only in the nineteenth century; most of the houses around it were built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, between the Peasants’ War and the Thirty Years’ War, and their stepped gables and bay windows mark the wealth that winemaking brought to the town. Winemakers’ houses are typically arranged around a courtyard.

What to see

• Église Saint-Maurice — thirteenth and fourteenth century, one of the largest Gothic churches in the Haut-Rhin, with a fine organ by the Silbermann school and a Romanesque tower base
• The Bucheneck — the fortified house of the bailiffs of Murbach, thirteenth century, now the town museum
• Nef des Jouets — the toy museum, in a former commandery of the Order of Malta: several thousand toys from the eighteenth century on, and much better than that sounds
• The fountains and the Renaissance houses — on the Place de la République and the streets round it
• Chapelle Saint-Sébastien — fifteenth century, with wall paintings
• Porte de Bollwiller — a Gothic gate on the road out to Bollwiller, known locally as the Heidentempel (“pagan temple”); fragments of the medieval town walls and towers survive nearby
• The ruined village of Alschwiller, destroyed by mercenary soldiers in 1375 or 1376 — the remains lie on the Saint-Georges hill, with a chapel and an equestrian statue of the saint, dated 1202, just behind it
• The grave of Ekaterina Goncharova in the town cemetery — sister-in-law of the poet Alexander Pushkin; she married Georges d’Anthès, who fatally wounded Pushkin in an 1837 duel, and followed him into exile here

The Bucheneck dates in part from the second half of the thirteenth century, with further building in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was sold as national property and used as a factory in the nineteenth century, before the town bought it in 1976 and restored it as the museum that opened in 1990. The collection includes portraits of the Waldner de Freundstein and Heeckeren d’Anthès families, religious art, costumes, archaeological finds and the town archives.

Construction of Église Saint-Maurice began in 1270 on the site of an older church; the nave and transept were heightened in the fourteenth century and the final bay at the west end was added in 1489. The church stands on the Route des Orgues d’Alsace, the regional organ trail: its organ was built by Jean-André Silbermann, completed in 1750 and listed as a historic monument in 1975.

The toy collection was assembled by Joëlle and Jean-Richard Haeusser and runs from antique to modern pieces — dolls, model cars and trains, board games, construction sets and handmade technical toys.

The wine

Soultz has vineyards on the slopes above and sits between two grand cru zones — the Ollwiller is on its own commune, on sandstone and clay, and the Guebwiller crus are next door. Riesling and Gewurztraminer dominate, as everywhere here.

Soultz and Guebwiller together produce four Grand Cru wines.

See the wines of Alsace.

Getting there

• By car — on the D430 / wine route. Guebwiller 5 minutes, Mulhouse 20, Colmar 30. See parking in France.
• By train — the nearest station is Bollwiller, 5 km, on the Strasbourg–Mulhouse line, with a bus connection.

Around

• Guebwiller — 3 km, four grands crus and three churches
• Murbach — 10 minutes up the valley, the Romanesque abbey
• Cernay — 10 km south, with the Doller valley steam railway
• Écomusée d’Alsace — 15 minutes at Ungersheim, the largest open-air museum in France
• Grand Ballon — 40 minutes up, the highest point of the Vosges

When to go

May to October. Soultz is a place to stop for an hour rather than a destination, but it is on the road between Mulhouse and the northern wine route and it is far more pleasant than the bypass. The Saint-Maurice organ is used for concerts in summer.

See Alsace.

Weather in Soultz-Haut-Rhin

Updated: 23 September 2026