Katia Schmitt is a local artist who has rebuilt, renovated and decorated this ancient house with excellent flair and taste. She has a shop on the ground floor, which doesn't impinge, with separate quite similar apartments across the first and second floors. We found the top apartment a charming place to stay for a week with our daughter, enjoying the view over the roof tops – complete with storks. It was always a pleasure to return to after a day exploring the local area by foot and by bike. Katia was friendly and helpful and the apartment nice and clean with sparkling windows. There is a small garden with a table, where we enjoyed aperitifs and al fresco dinners on warm evenings, though we had the advantage of no one staying in the other apartment or in the house next door. Eguisheim has interesting buildings and is pleasant to explore, but it is very much a tourist village with flocks of visitors and even a tourist train during the day. No problem in the early morning and evening when it was invariably quiet, and the house was pleasingly quiet at night. There is one good boulangerie nearby. Most of the other shops sell tourist stuff or stylishly packaged local wine, since Eguisheim is a major Alsace wine centre. We enjoyed good walks up in the foothills of the Vosges, just behind the village, and good cycle rides in all directions – through the vineyards south and north, up into the wooded hills, across the Rhine to Germany and back through the charming centre of Colmar. We had a very good week, staying in a delightfully civilised house in a delightfully civilised corner of France.