House of Heads, Colmar

The making of…

Walking through the quiet streets of Colmar early one morning, still half-asleep and carrying my sketchbook, I turned a corner and felt suddenly observed.

I had rented a car for 45 days to wander through France without much of a plan, just the conviction of drawing some of the most beautiful cathedrals in the country. Somewhere around the halfway mark, I veered east and found myself in Alsace — a region stitched together with vineyards, church spires, and pastel timbered houses that look as though they’ve stepped out of a storybook. I stayed for a few days near Riquewihr, at a small winery, where I developed a fondness for Gewürztraminer and the rhythm of waking before dawn to explore nearby towns with pen in hand.

Colmar is full of beautiful façades — ornate signs, painted beams, window boxes just beginning to open to the morning light. But it was impossible to ignore this one. There it stood: the House of Heads. A hundred small faces peering down from the façade, some amused, some stern, some unreadable. In the stillness of the empty street, they felt almost alive — like a silent audience watching the day begin.

Quick Facts:

  • Built in 1609, during the late Renaissance in Alsace, when Colmar was a prosperous trading city along the Rhine.

  • The house was commissioned by Anton Burger, a wealthy merchant in Colmar, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, not yet France.

  • Its façade is covered with 106 sculpted faces, carved by local stonemason Albert Schmidt. Some grin, some grimace, some look bewildered.

  • The decorative “heads” were fashionable in Renaissance architecture. Grotesque and expressive faces symbolized:

    • Wealth and intellectual sophistication

    • A humanist interest in character and emotion

    • Protection from evil spirits (similar to gargoyles)

  • The building was later topped (in 1902) with a copper statue by Auguste Bartholdi, the Colmar-born sculptor best known for the Statue of Liberty. The statue depicts a cooper (barrel maker), a nod to Alsace’s wine tradition.

  • Today, the Maison des Têtes is a luxury hotel and restaurant.

 

There are so many layers of history in this region. The Romans were the first ones to start planting vineyards and establishing formal trade routes.. Germanic tribes settled here after them, adding language and traditions that would linger for centuries. By the 9th century, the town — then called Columbarium — began to take shape around monasteries that organized the land, cultivated the fields, and grounded the community.

The Middle Ages were Colmar’s golden era. By the 13th century it had become a Free Imperial City within the Holy Roman Empire, which meant independence, trade, and ambition. Merchants moved through with wine, textiles, and ideas, and the town prospered. Guilds kept standards high and profits higher. Wealth translated into architecture — warehouses, churches, and proud private homes that still lean into the streets today. Buildings like the Koïfhus and the grand Saint-Martin church weren’t just functional; they were statements. This was a city confident in its place on the map.

But the Alsace region has never had a simple identity. Colmar has shifted between German and French control more than once, especially after the Thirty Years’ War and later under Louis XIV. Then again after the Franco-Prussian War. And again after both World Wars. Each change left its mark — in language, in administration, in architectural details, even in temperament. It’s a place shaped by tension and resilience, by belonging to more than one story at a time.

 

Get a little piece of Colmar

Here are some of the formats that I’ve made this image into.

The Original

Reproduction

Sticker

Visit the Store!

Dive a little deeper

Books set in France

  • The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  • The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  • The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

  • Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky

  • Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

Books about France

  • The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes

  • Judgement of Paris by Ross King

  • The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire by Bart Van Loo

  • A Bite-Sized History of France by Stephane Henaut

  • Let’s Eat France by François-Régis Gaudry

French Artists

  • Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) - Look into his Moroccan Travel Diaries and watercolors

  • Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755 – 1842) Rococo + Neoclassical portraiture

  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) painter, printmaker and illustrator

  • All the well-known Impressionists

  • Marion Bretagne - contemporary artist