Kaysersberg Ramparts
— the river the rampart still watches.
Not only on a wall.
“The fortified bridge over the Weiss is the photograph everyone leaves with. Crenellated parapet, a single sandstone arch, a small Pietà set into a niche above the water on the upstream side. Above the town the keep of the upper castle holds the ridge, the one Frederick II bought in 1227 to hold the road over the Vosges. The vineyards begin at the gate and don't stop until the Rhine. The village voted itself out of obscurity in 2017, but the ramparts have been here a thousand years and weren't planning to leave.
Kaysersberg Ramparts, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Kaysersberg sits at the mouth of the Weiss valley in upper Alsace, 12 km northwest of Colmar in the Haut-Rhin department. The medieval commune merged in 2016 with Kientzheim and Sigolsheim to form Kaysersberg Vignoble, but the medieval centre still answers to the older name. The town is a stop on the Route des Vins d'Alsace, the long wine road that runs from Marlenheim south to Thann. In 2017 it was voted Village préféré des Français in the annual France 2 viewer poll, a recognition that has driven visitor traffic without changing the shape of the streets. The historic core holds a population of around 2,720 at an elevation of 236 metres, and a ring of fortifications that includes the curtain wall, four surviving gates, the fortified bridge over the Weiss, and the keep of the upper castle on the ridge above.
The fortified bridge, the Pont fortifié, spans the Weiss in a single arch of pink Vosges sandstone, built in 1501 with a crenellated parapet and a small Pietà set into a niche above the water. It is the only surviving fortified bridge of its kind in Alsace. The upper castle, the Château de Kaysersberg, was bought by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1227 to control the road across the Vosges between Lorraine and the Rhine plain. Its circular keep, about 11 metres in diameter, still stands. The town's curtain wall and four gates were begun in the 13th century and reinforced after the town joined the Décapole, the league of ten Alsatian imperial cities, in 1354. Pink Vosges sandstone, quarried from the same hills the vineyards climb, is the constant.
Kaysersberg is a town, not a paid site. The ramparts, the gates, and the fortified bridge are walkable any hour of any day with no fee. The castle keep is reached by a short marked path that climbs from the upper end of the rue du Général-de-Gaulle; the climb takes about 15 minutes and the keep is freely open in daylight from spring through autumn. The town's Christmas market, one of the most respected on the Alsace circuit, runs the last weekend of November and the four weekends of Advent. High summer fills the rue du Général-de-Gaulle to elbow density by midday; for the bridge in unhurried light, the best window is the half hour either side of sunrise.