FORMER DOMINICAN MONASTERY

This magnificent building, which housed the municipal library for more than 50 years, from 1951 to 2017, was renovated and transformed to showcase its invaluable collection of 400,000 documents, including 1,217 manuscripts, the oldest of which, Carolingian, come from Murbach Abbey, and illuminated books from the monasteries of Upper Alsace. Among the col More than 50,000 books printed between the 16th and 18th centuries. In this collection, 8,000 volumes from the 16th century, again mostly Germanic, constitute an exceptional collection in France.

The regional (Alsatian) collection is rich in some 40,000 volumes and brochures. 100,000 ancient volumes bequeathed to the town by Colmar scholars in the 19th century. An exceptional collection enhanced by a new museography in 2021.

Of Gothic architecture, the church, the foundation stone of which was laid in 1283, was not completed until 1346. The monastery buildings built around 1300 were an intellectual home in which personalities such as Master Eckhart and Johannes Nider resided.
In 1458, the cloister was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in its original style. In the 18th century, the interior was completely refurbished. The first floor was also built at this time.

With the Revolution, the religious buildings lost their original function and were assigned to different services. The Dominicans thus became a gendarmerie barracks, a school for teachers before finding in 1940 its use as a library under the impulse of Nazi Germany, intended for the Germanisation of the local populations. At the end of the war, the German collections were destroyed. The building, classified as a historical monument, became the municipal library in 1951.

A bookbinding workshop is installed in the heart of the building where five restorers work, thus allowing the establishment to preserve and restore the library's precious books.