"Haut Rhein" a Colmar Travel Page by traveloturc

Colmar, quoted for the first time in 823 under the name of " Columbarium " or " Dovecote ", was the centre of a vast royal domain, which was in the 10th century half of which was offered to the bishopric of " Constance ", and half to the abbey of Payerne (Switzerland).
The courtyards of " Payerne's Oberhof " and the " Constance's Niederhof " were the cores of the future city.
Fortified in the beginning of the13th century, it became an imperial town.
The constitution, fixed into 1360 after hard internal fights, gave the main part of the power to the professional corporations.
Colmar was one of the principal cities of the " Décapole " at the end of the Middle
Age, with its prosperous business of wines, an important artistic bloom, illustrated in particular by Martin Schongauer, painter and engraver.
In the 16th century, the Reform did not manage to definitively supplant Catholicism.
Annexed to France, in 1679, Colmar becomes the headquarter of the Sovereign Council of Alsace, the highest judicial authority of the province.
Chief town of the department of Haut-Rhin in 1791.
Between 1871 and 1918, under the German occupation, the city distinguished itself by a particularly marked francomania, whose satirical draughtsman Jean-Jacques Waltz, called " Hansi ", is the expression thereof.