Tucked into the French northeast, Alsace has been a frontier zone between Latin and Germanic worlds for as long as such worlds have existed. It holds the continental record for being invaded.
An alsacien born in 1869 would have changed nationality four times — shuttling from French to German and back — by 1946.
Talk about ambiguity. Talk about historical confusion . . . as the new memorial museum at Schirmeck has been doing since it opened in June.
Yet Alsace doesn’t appear confused. From the havoc of history, the region has taken refuge in rural domesticity. Wonderful half-timbered villages stand substantial on the landscape, offering the promise of farm work, apple-cheeked matrons and warm homecomings.
There are forests and hills to trek, superb streets and castles to wander, and food and wine sufficient to resolve most lingering tensions. We start our tour in Strasbourg.
DAY ONE
Over the waterways to the centre, the most welcoming of any big French city. There’s history here — medieval independence, centre of humanism, that sort of thing. Wackiness, too: “Every lunatic has a cap; I have my hat,” runs a gnomic Strasbourg saying.
And so, once, did the gothic cathedral (have a hat, I mean). To stop revolutionaries wrecking the place in the 1790s, locals winched a huge Phrygian bonnet atop the magnificent sandstone frontage. If a cathedral wore the People’s headgear, they reasoned, it would be safe. They were right.
Now wander the sinuous streets about Rue des Frères, with their wraparound sense of centuries. Wrought-iron signs swing from overhanging first floors and bookshops jostle for space with bierstubs.
Check in at the Hotel Monopole Métropole (16 Rue Kuhn; 00 33-3 88 14 39 14, www.bestwestern-monopole. com; doubles from £58), then return to the cathedral square and the Maison Kammerzell (03 88 32 42 14, www.maison-kammerzell.com; from £22), where an ornate wooden facade fronts a warren of rooms on four floors. Don’t miss the choucroute à trois poissons.
DAY TWO
Stroll to the Petite France district. Lining the waterways that define the city, this was once home to fishermen, tanners and syphilitics. Now it’s a concentration of picturesqueness that escapes no tourist. Ample opportunities here to buy fluffy storks and porcelain depictions of alsaciennes wearing traditional pinned-to-a-dead-crow headgear. Never mind. It’s still unmissable.
Lunch at the Petit Bois Vert (2 Quai de la Bruche; from £10.50), then to the car and out to Hochfelden. Villages, self-contained as tiny statelets, dot the farming plain like patterns on an eiderdown. Continue to Bouxwiller, then climb the comely Vosges hills towards La Petite Pierre, the sort of remote village you come across with a smile.
Strung along a ridge, with a castle up top, the village lords it over wooded valleys. If you want to trek, get maps from Audrey at the tourist office. If not, amble to the Maison de Cléone (3 Rue Principale), where the Parisian couturier has set up an idiosyncratic exhibition dedicated, I think, to the Eternal Feminine. It’s a flight of imagination rare in la France profonde. Or anywhere. Included is a ravishingly original wedding dress — though, as a lady commented, “one would need an important bosom to carry it off”.
Wind down to Saverne, then out to Le Clos de la Garenne (88 Route du Haut Barr; 03 88 71 20 41, www.tavernekatz. com) for substantial country comfort and cooking (doubles from £35; dinner from £25).
DAY THREE
Roll with the mountain road to Schirmeck. On a hillside before town is the new Mémorial de l’Alsace-Moselle (£7). Here is Alsace’s 20th-century story, the second world war at its centre.
It remains a touchy subject. Annexed by Germany between 1870 and the end of the first world war, Alsace did rather well. Economic progress and social welfare were significantly ahead of France’s. When the Germans returned in 1940, many alsaciens wavered. Thousands had, after all, been born and brought up under German rule.
These, however, were different Germans. They once again annexed Alsace, and Nazification was swift. From banning berets, the Gauleiters moved to forced labour and conscription into the German army. About 40,000 alsaciens died for Hitler on the eastern front. Suffering was intense. Wavering was over.
Peacetime reabsorption into France was, therefore, overwhelmingly welcomed by alsaciens — but not necessarily by the rest of the country. Suspicion of the “French Boches” was rife. It hasn’t entirely disappeared. Below the surface, tensions still simmer, not least because communities mourn sons who died on both sides of the conflict. The Mémorial covers the episode with gripping clarity.
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()Then climb way up the mountain opposite Le Struthof for a few harrowing minutes. On a slope where normal people might have built a holiday complex, the Nazis established a concentration camp. The impact is in the detail — the beating table, the hooks for hangings, the crematorium oven. Looking up from these practical horrors, you survey mountain scenes purpose-created to raise the spirits. God alone knows how the inmates felt.
Enough despair. Head across the mountain and down to Obernai, warm with wooden gables, ginnels and a lovely sense of life lived decently for centuries. Soak it all up while lunching at the Halle au Blé (Place du Marché; mains from £8.50). Now you’re on the Alsace wine route, the prettiest in Europe. At the hinge of plain and mountains, it curves through villages straight out of folk tales. Vines run right down to medieval gates, overseen by castles on tree-clad summits.
I could go on, but you’d die of hyperbole. To Mittelbergheim, where you should call in on Albert Seltz (21 Rue Principale; 03 88 08 91 77). He’s a wine fanatic, with the best sylvaner I’ve tasted.
On to Dambach, then through the medieval gate of Bergheim to Le Cour du Bailli (57 Grand’Rue; 03 89 73 73 46, www.cour-bailli.com; doubles from £45), an old farmstead adapted with simplicity. Dine at the Winstub L’Altenberg (14 Place du Dr Walter; 03 89 73 73 97; £15).
DAY FOUR
To Riquewihr, so exquisitely preserved that it comes on like a permanent pageant. Get there early, before everyone else.
Then double back to Hunawihr, where the stork sanctuary (£5.70) will now be open. Alsace’s emblematic bird was being wiped out by its habit of flying into power lines. Here, they’re breeding them for reintroduction. Up close, they are beautiful birds, with long, graceful necks and feminine eyes (or perhaps I’ve been travelling alone for too long).
Across to Colmar, where you’ll need yet more superlatives for the half-timbered city centre. Also for lunch at the Fer Rouge (52 Grand’Rue; 03 89 41 37 24, www.au-fer-rouge.com; from £34). Patrick Fulgraff’s cooking has the style the 16th-century surroundings require.
From the table, stagger to the Musée d’Unterlinden
(1 Rue Unterlinden), where the Isenheim altarpiece will sober you up fast. Matthias Grünewald’s Renaissance masterpiece throbs with suffering and disquiet.
So, down to Soultz, before following signs to the Ecomusée, a village wonderfully re-created to preserve alsacien pastoral traditions. Check into the museum hotel, a series of lodges spread about parkland (Hôtel les Loges, Ungersheim; 03 89 74 44 95, www.ecomusee-alsace.fr; doubles from £65, B&B), and dine at the museum’s restaurant; from £11.
Tomorrow, you’ll visit the museum (£11), where, if you have any interest in human life, you’ll be very happy. Then return to Strasbourg airport.
Getting there: Air France (0870 142 4343, www.airfrance.co.uk) flies from Gatwick to Strasbourg; from £95. Hertz (0870 844 8844, www.hertz.co.uk) has inclusive four-day rentals from £86; or try Budget (0870 153 9170, www.budget.co.uk). Strasbourg is a 390-mile drive from Calais; Hoverspeed (0870 240 8070, www.hoverspeed.co.uk) has Dover-Calais returns from £58 for a car and up to five passengers.
