wear expansive straw hats and jumpers, all of which have been tinted a shimmering blue-green by the vagrant spray, a touch of vivid color in the already sensational brightness of the street.
Turn the corner and you face the Hotel de Ville, encrusted with coats - of - arms and capped by a spiny bell tower. An external stairway, supported by a squat pointed arch, leads to the hall where his honor performs marriage ceremonies. Perhaps it is rather groggy architecture, but it’s lot of fun.
The perfect stage set is found in that immaculate little street in Ammerschwihr which culminates in the picture-book Town Gate. So theatrical is it that one suspects the far-reaching hand of Hollywood. In its plastering and stonework, its eccentric sun dial, slapped on like a careless postage stamp, its dizzy roof lines and crazy stork’s nest, it is everything the movies try so hard, and so expensively, to get, and usually fail. All that are needed are some peasants with steins, singing rollicking airs, several polka-dancing bar maids, a few hussars in red coats and shining boots, and you have a perfect setting of the Graustark” type, all ready for a love waltz.
I passed an enlightening morning near here, watching (from a sketching stool), two squads of leisurely craftsmen who were doing some very workmanlike house surgery, bolstering up a doddering veteran who had begun to waver under the cruel centuries. Much had to be torn down in the house, and it was interesting to note the precision and thoroughness of the repairs. New beams were being hewn from weathered oak logs, treated with oil and stain and set with fat pegs. The plasterers and bricklayers worked with a casual leisure which would be the despair of our hustling contractors. To call their progress across the scaffolds snaillike would be to exaggerate their speed, but when the job is finished, another house will stand, ready to withstand the rigors of countless years. Conversation, accompanied by much labor-losing gesturing, is an indispensable adjunct to their craft. If the weather be warm, they seem to require a good many recesses for a canette of cooling lager. If a strange automobile or unfamiliar wench passes up the street, they must stop work in unison, gaze
thoughtfully upon the new apparition and discuss the subject until its possibilities are exhausted. The barrage of comment and speculation caused by this peering pencil pusher must have held back the day’s production by at least ten per cent. However, if one is willing to abide this sprightly interest in everything that goes on about him, these Alsatian artisans will finish, finally, by turning out a masterpiece of good building. Cross the border into the shoddy and unbeautiful cities of St. Die and Lunoville and you appreciate the craftsmanship of Alsace.
Kaysersberg is larger and more imperfect, perhaps, but it is here that the most brilliant of the old houses are found. The vineyards form a steep, patched gallery around Kaysersberg, wedging it into a house-cluttered valley. The battered remains of the ancient fortifications roam over the hillsides, like immature walls of China, broken by the gaunt ruin of a feudal chateau. The town can claim no fanciful gates, but to atone for this lack it has a unique fortified bridge, pierced by narrow stone slits for the use of defending warriors and spiked with two stone sentry boxes. This enchanted spot is flooded with utterly bizarre timbered dwellings. One stands confused on the miniature bridgehead, wondering which way to turn. Perhaps the most amusing structure is the present museum of the treasures of Kaysersberg, but there is a glorified grocery store in the opposite direction which is almost as choice a specimen. The large, semi-circular window openings on the ground floor of the museum are as picturesque as they are unstructural, but they add to the gay nonchalance of the town. Eighteenth century engravings reveal that even these houses which seem so perfect now have lost much of their charm. No longer are the windows paned with old bottle glass. Many of the carved beams have disappeared and plain ones have been substituted in their stead. Whether the foul hand of the collector or the antique dealer is to be seen here, I do not know. Kaysersberg has a village inn of much charm (this for the followers of our Confidential Travel Guide),
Turn the corner and you face the Hotel de Ville, encrusted with coats - of - arms and capped by a spiny bell tower. An external stairway, supported by a squat pointed arch, leads to the hall where his honor performs marriage ceremonies. Perhaps it is rather groggy architecture, but it’s lot of fun.
The perfect stage set is found in that immaculate little street in Ammerschwihr which culminates in the picture-book Town Gate. So theatrical is it that one suspects the far-reaching hand of Hollywood. In its plastering and stonework, its eccentric sun dial, slapped on like a careless postage stamp, its dizzy roof lines and crazy stork’s nest, it is everything the movies try so hard, and so expensively, to get, and usually fail. All that are needed are some peasants with steins, singing rollicking airs, several polka-dancing bar maids, a few hussars in red coats and shining boots, and you have a perfect setting of the Graustark” type, all ready for a love waltz.
I passed an enlightening morning near here, watching (from a sketching stool), two squads of leisurely craftsmen who were doing some very workmanlike house surgery, bolstering up a doddering veteran who had begun to waver under the cruel centuries. Much had to be torn down in the house, and it was interesting to note the precision and thoroughness of the repairs. New beams were being hewn from weathered oak logs, treated with oil and stain and set with fat pegs. The plasterers and bricklayers worked with a casual leisure which would be the despair of our hustling contractors. To call their progress across the scaffolds snaillike would be to exaggerate their speed, but when the job is finished, another house will stand, ready to withstand the rigors of countless years. Conversation, accompanied by much labor-losing gesturing, is an indispensable adjunct to their craft. If the weather be warm, they seem to require a good many recesses for a canette of cooling lager. If a strange automobile or unfamiliar wench passes up the street, they must stop work in unison, gaze
thoughtfully upon the new apparition and discuss the subject until its possibilities are exhausted. The barrage of comment and speculation caused by this peering pencil pusher must have held back the day’s production by at least ten per cent. However, if one is willing to abide this sprightly interest in everything that goes on about him, these Alsatian artisans will finish, finally, by turning out a masterpiece of good building. Cross the border into the shoddy and unbeautiful cities of St. Die and Lunoville and you appreciate the craftsmanship of Alsace.
Kaysersberg is larger and more imperfect, perhaps, but it is here that the most brilliant of the old houses are found. The vineyards form a steep, patched gallery around Kaysersberg, wedging it into a house-cluttered valley. The battered remains of the ancient fortifications roam over the hillsides, like immature walls of China, broken by the gaunt ruin of a feudal chateau. The town can claim no fanciful gates, but to atone for this lack it has a unique fortified bridge, pierced by narrow stone slits for the use of defending warriors and spiked with two stone sentry boxes. This enchanted spot is flooded with utterly bizarre timbered dwellings. One stands confused on the miniature bridgehead, wondering which way to turn. Perhaps the most amusing structure is the present museum of the treasures of Kaysersberg, but there is a glorified grocery store in the opposite direction which is almost as choice a specimen. The large, semi-circular window openings on the ground floor of the museum are as picturesque as they are unstructural, but they add to the gay nonchalance of the town. Eighteenth century engravings reveal that even these houses which seem so perfect now have lost much of their charm. No longer are the windows paned with old bottle glass. Many of the carved beams have disappeared and plain ones have been substituted in their stead. Whether the foul hand of the collector or the antique dealer is to be seen here, I do not know. Kaysersberg has a village inn of much charm (this for the followers of our Confidential Travel Guide),