Colmar

If you imagined the village from Disney's Beauty and the Beast as a real-life location, Colmar would be it. Colmar's vividly colored half-timbered buildings and weeping willow trees cling to the margins of canals from the Launch River, creating a postcard-perfect atmosphere. The Fishmonger's District, Little Venice, where you can rent a rowboat, hundreds of historic structures from the 1500s to the 1600s, and one of Europe's best Christmas markets are all must-sees in Colmar. The Oeuvre Notre-Dame Art Museum, located at the foot of the city's cathedral, houses the best sculptures and paintings from the Middle Ages in the Upper Rhine River Valley.

While it is the old-world beauty that has made Colmar the bell of France’s Alsace region (pronounced Alls-Ass), it is the amazing wine history that cements it on the Top Medieval Cities list. Colmar started as a rural community of wine producers and it quickly became known as the region’s king of wine. This is pretty impressive as the Alsace region is widely known as the Route du Vin or Wine Road. By the Middle Ages, Colmar’s Horbourg-Wihr port was being sent to the far corners of Europe. Today the city specializes mainly in perfect white wines including Riesling, Gewürztraminer; Pinot Gris, and Muscat d’Alsace.

Country: France