Collégiale Saint-Martin de Colmar

Colmar

On the south portal, on one of the archivolts, a man holds a set square; at this spot a name is carved, ‘Maistres Humbret’. He is the master builder who, from 1234, rebuilt the great church of Colmar on the foundations of a Romanesque church, starting with the transept, then the three aisles and the towers. The tympanum of the same portal tells an episode from the life of Saint Nicholas: the bishop saves from dishonour three girls whose penniless father was about to prostitute them, and snatches young men from death. The choir, later, is the work of Guillaume de Marbourg, who died in 1366; the building work ended around 1365, and the church, entirely of pink Vosges sandstone, became one of the great Gothic works of Upper Alsace. In 1572 a violent fire destroyed the roof timbers and the crowning of the south tower; three years later it was capped with a Renaissance-style onion-domed lantern, intended as temporary, which has given the building its silhouette ever since. In 1473 Martin Schongauer painted an altarpiece for Saint-Martin, the Madonna of the Rose Bower, which originally measured about two and a half metres by one metre sixty-five before being cut down on all sides; it remained there for centuries, and today it is admired in the former Dominican church. A collegiate church, Saint-Martin was a cathedral only for a moment: in 1791 Arbogast Martin, constitutional Bishop of the Haut-Rhin, consecrated in Paris, settled in Colmar and made the church his cathedral, until the Concordat put an end to it in 1802.

Wikipédia — Collégiale Saint-Martin de Colmar ↗

Getting there : Place de la Cathédrale, in the centre of Colmar (Haut-Rhin). Opening times and any admission charge to be checked. Schongauer's Madonna of the Rose Bower is no longer here: it is displayed in the former Dominican church in Colmar (times and price to be checked).

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound