On June 10, 2025, La Poste issued a stamp depicting Colmar Cathedral Square, with an accompanying vignette featuring Alsatian specialties, to mark the 98th FFAP Congress.
The stamp depicts Cathedral Square with half-timbered houses on the left and the Saint-Martin Collegiate Church on the right. The accompanying vignette showcases three Alsatian bakery specialties: kouglof, mannele, and pretzel.
With its tall, brightly colored half-timbered houses accentuated by flower-bedecked balconies, Colmar is a jewel that captivates with its homogeneity combined with the diversity of its historic center. In 2025, Colmar will host the 98th Congress of the French Federation of Philatelic Associations, as the vignette accompanying the stamp recalls. This evokes another regional treasure: gourmet specialties, from the iconic kouglof to gingerbread cookies and pretzels.
Old Colmar is organized around the Saint-Martin collegiate church, built in the 13th century, a major work of Gothic architecture in Alsace, and can be discovered by strolling through its narrow streets. One never tires of admiring the medieval half-timbered buildings, often decorated with signs, the oldest of which date back to the 15th century. You can also cruise the canals of Little Venice and wander through the Tanners' Quarter with its original loft-style dwellings, whose attics were used to dry hides.
The buildings tell the story of the city's economic power. On the first floor of the Koïfhus, the oldest public building in Colmar (1480), stained-glass windows bearing the coats of arms of the cities of the Décapole evoke this powerful league that united ten free Alsatian cities within the Holy Roman Empire from 1354 to 1679. The Pfister House (1537) and the House of Heads (1609), in the German Renaissance style, like so many other bourgeois houses in Colmar, bear witness to the prosperity of Colmar's merchants.
People come from far and wide to admire the moving Isenheim Altarpiece, a treasure of the Unterlinden Museum. This masterpiece by Grünewald, one of the greatest German painters of the late 15th century, unfolds across eight panels scenes populated by multicolored angels, ferocious monsters, and above all, a strikingly realistic crucifixion. In the eyes of some, Colmar is the most Alsatian of the Alsace cities. We'll let you be the judge... This city, in any case, truly exudes the Alsatian soul.
