Place du Marché & Hôtel de Ville
The beating heart of Obernai, Place du Marché is a riot of half-timbered facades, geranium-draped balconies and a Renaissance fountain that has been drawing gasps since the 16th century. Arrive on a sunny morning and the warm sandstone glows like amber.
A Square Built to Impress
The six-bucket well — the Puits à Six Seaux — sits dead-centre in the square and dates from 1579, its wrought-iron canopy still perfectly intact. It is one of the most photographed Renaissance wells in all of France, and deservedly so.
The Gothic Chapelle du Beffroi looms behind it, its 13th-century tower offering a clock-face visible from almost every café terrace on the square. Together the well, the tower and the pastel guild houses form a composition that looks almost too pretty to be real.
The Town Hall Up Close
Obernai's Hôtel de Ville, built in 1523, is a masterpiece of Alsatian civic Gothic — look for the carved wooden loggias on the upper floors and the heraldic shields picked out in vivid colour above the entrance arch.
Step inside the courtyard during opening hours to see the ornate staircase turret, a detail most visitors rushing across the square entirely miss. The tourist office inside can supply a free self-guided walking map of the old town.
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