Maison Pfister Audio Guide

Maison Pfister: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Maison Pfister

   Welcome to Maison Pfister, in the heart of old Colmar. It stands on the corner where the street of the Mercers, the rue Mercière, meets the street of the Merchants, the rue des Marchands. Its address is 11, rue des Marchands, though it was once numbered 11, rue Mercière. Both street names point to trade, which suits a house built by a man who made his living from it. This is probably the best-known house in all of Colmar. Alsace likes to compare it with the Kammerzell house in Strasbourg, another timber-and-stone showpiece. It was built in 1537, and it is often described as the first example of Renaissance architecture in Colmar. As you stand looking up, notice the two-storey corner window that juts out over the street, the wooden gallery, the little octagonal turret, and the paintings that cover the walls. In the next few minutes we will look at the man who built it, the house itself, and the painted stories on its walls. We will finish with the century-long chain of owners who kept it alive.

2. 02

   A Hatmaker's Statement of Success

   Every grand house starts with somebody's ambition. Here it was a hatter named Scherer, called Louis in some accounts and Ludwig in others. He was originally from Besançon, and he became a citizen of Colmar. His name appears in an inscription on the sill of the corner oriel, so he signed his own house. Hatmaking alone did not pay for this. Scherer is said to have made his fortune trading money in the Val de Liepvre, the valley west of Colmar. In the sixteenth century a prosperous merchant who wanted the town to notice him could do it in stone, wood and paint. The house is the result of that wish, an advertisement for his success placed on one of the busiest corners in town. The house is named after somebody else entirely. The Pfister name comes from a later family of owners. In 1841 a tradesman named François Jean Pfister bought the building, and the name stuck, even though the Pfisters came along three centuries after Scherer.

3. 03

   Gothic Bones, Renaissance Spirit

   Now look at how the house is built. Its walls are yellow sandstone from Rouffach, a wine town to the south of Colmar, combined with timber. The structure still follows the Gothic tradition, but the decoration is of the humanist culture of the Renaissance. So the house stands between two eras, which is part of its charm. Three features give it its silhouette. The first is the corner oriel, a projecting window that rises two storeys and turns the corner of the building. The second is the long wooden gallery. The third is the octagonal turret. Together they make a roofline and profile that you will not forget. This fairy-tale look has found a modern audience. Colmar's tourism office names Maison Pfister, along with the old customs house, the Koïfhus, among the buildings that echo in the world of Hayao Miyazaki's 2004 film, Howl's Moving Castle. The house itself is far older than any film, but you can see why animators would love it.

4. 04

   A Picture Book on the Walls

   The painted façades are what make this house a picture book. The decoration mixes Germanic emperors of the sixteenth century, the Fathers of the Church, scenes from the Bible, and allegorical figures. It is a catalogue of what a learned townsman of that age wanted to see: history, faith and moral lessons side by side. The paintings are probably the work of Christian Vacksterffer, whose name is also spelled Bockstorffer. One account adds a twist. It says the draper Nicolas Sattmann, who owned the house after 1567, commissioned the painted decoration. Whichever owner ordered them, the pictures show the tastes of Colmar's merchant class in the sixteenth century. The humanism of the Renaissance meant that the educated bourgeoisie delighted in scenes from antiquity, scripture and allegory, and they wanted them on their own walls. Here the whole street can read the message. Try to pick out a figure or a scene, and imagine how it would have looked to a passerby who knew each story by heart.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   A house like this survives only because people keep caring for it. In 1596 it was bought by Claude Sison, another merchant, who restored it in 1613. In 1892 Victor Judlin purchased it and had it renovated in 1909. The house was protected as a historic monument by a decree dated the fourteenth of March, 1927, and it was restored again in 1971. Before you move on, take a slow walk around the corner. Compare the sandstone with the timber, follow the line of the gallery, and try to read the oriel from below. Then step back far enough to see the house all at once, with its painted figures and its turret above the street. Colmar has more painted and carved façades nearby. The Maison des Têtes, for example, is covered with 106 grimacing heads. Wander a little farther, and see how many more merchants' dreams you can spot above the pavement.