Colmar, Eguisheim and Kaysersberg: The Issenheim Altarpiece and the Wine-Route Villages

Required Activities

• In the old convent church at the Musée Unterlinden, work round the Issenheim Altarpiece and find the three things that show it was painted for a hospital ward: the blue lips and nail-twisted feet of the Christus dolens, the medicinal herbs against Saint Antony's fire lying at Saint Antony's feet, and Saint Sebastian standing guard against plague on the left shutter

• Take a flat-bottomed barge up the Lauch from the quai de la Poissonnerie beside the covered market to the old market gardens, the route the Krutenau growers used to bring their vegetables in to the quayside

• Go into the Musée Bartholdi at 30 rue des Marchands, the house the sculptor was born in and which was left to the town in 1907, and find the bronze group Les grands Soutiens du monde of 1902 standing in its courtyard

• Walk one full lap of Eguisheim's ring of streets, laid out on the octagonal line of the old wall that copied the castle's own rare octagonal plan, and finish in the castle courtyard at the chapel of Saint-Léon IX, built 1888 to 1894 on the foundations of the keep

• Cross Kaysersberg's fortified bridge of 1514 and stop at the chapel standing mid-span under the arms of the Holy Roman Empire, then climb to the Schlossberg, built about 1210 with a round keep at the point of its triangular wall, and come back down past the house where Albert Schweitzer was born on 14 January 1875