4. Strasbourg to Obenheim

This "prodigy of the gigantic and the delicate", admired by Victor Hugo and celebrated by Goethe, who had his first love there, can be seen from very far away in the plain of Alsace, and even from the Vosges or the Black Forest.
Notre-Dame Cathedral was founded in 1015 on the remains of a previous cathedral and was erected from 1220 onwards by the Free City of Strasbourg, a rich merchant and financial republic, in the Gothic style.
142 metres high, it was for a long time the highest building in the world. Practically completed in 1365, it has the particularity of having seen the space between its two towers filled in in 1388 and can be recognized by its unique bell tower, topped by a spire added in 1439.
The site of the cathedral was used by several successive religious buildings from the time of the Roman occupation. According to tradition, a Roman sanctuary dedicated to the god Mars occupied the site until an unknown date. A cathedral was erected by Bishop Arbogast at the end of the 7th century on the basis of a temple dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, but no remains have been preserved until today. Piles from the foundation of the building in 1015 were found in 1905. After the fire of 1176, which destroyed the eastern parts of the cathedral, Henri d'Asuel dit Hasenbourg, the new bishop of Strasbourg from 1180 to 1190, decided to build a fourth cathedral. At the end of 1276, Bishop Conrad de Lichtenberg ordered the construction of the Western Massif, which was completed in 1439.
More information: Wikipedia

Residence of the Bishop of Strasbourg in the 18th century. The palace was built between 1732 and 1741 for Cardinal Armand-Gaston de Rohan-Soubise, prince bishop of Strasbourg, and was inspired by the great mansions of Paris. During the Revolution it became the town hall and from 1805 onwards an imperial and royal residence. Seat of the German university from 1872 to 1884, it now houses an archaeology museum, a museum of decorative arts and a museum of fine arts.

It is the only Protestant church to have preserved canons and a Protestant seminary is located nearby.
St. Thomas' Church has a very special architectural type as it is a five-ship hall church of equal height. It is the oldest in the southwestern part of the Holy Roman Empire, thus contradicting the usual basilica design. The church is surmounted by two bell towers: a square one at the main entrance and a hexagonal one at the transept crossing.
Since the 6th century, the building has been known as Saint-Thomas and the bishop Saint-Florent of Strasbourg was buried there around 697.
Saint-Florent was an Irish hermit who lived at the foot of the Ringelsberg near Schirmeck, with a few cells the monastery of the Holy Trinity was born, it is there that he was picked up to be bishop. He had a hospice built near St. Thomas Church to accommodate his Irish companions. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, his tomb in St. Thomas Church became a place of pilgrimage for Irish monks.
More info at: Wikipedia

A charming district of Strasbourg that you will pass through at the start of your stage. The river Ill, made navigable before flowing into the Rhine, came to crack near the half-timbered houses so characteristic of Alsace. Do not hesitate to discover these very picturesque lanes before taking the Via Columbani and crossing the Covered Bridges, which are no longer covered, with its towers and admire the Vauban dam. This district deserves several hours of visit.

After the visit of Petite France you will discover the "Ponts Couverts". The cover was removed in the 18th century but the name has remained. The 4 towers of the 14th century give an imposing view of the former ramparts of the republic of Strasbourg in the Middle Ages.
After Strasbourg was attached to France in 1681, a new belt of fortifications was built by Vauban, of which the dam, which can be admired from the "Ponts Couverts", is one of the last remains.

Eschau, situated on the Roman road from Basel to Strasbourg, was for seven and a half centuries (770-1525) the seat of a community of Benedictine nuns, founded by the Bishop of Strasbourg Remigius around 770, nephew of St. Odile. According to Bishop Remi's will, written on 15 March 778, he brought back from Rome on 10 May 777 relics of Saint Sophia of Rome and those of her three daughters, received from Pope Adrian I. He placed them in the abbey church dedicated to Our Lady and Saint Trophime. The abbey was consecrated to Saint Sophia.
The nuns remained there until 1525. The abbey was then incorporated into the episcopal mense, and in 1615 it was ceded to the Grand Chapter of Strasbourg, which administered it until its destruction during the Revolution. All that remains of the abbey today is the Romanesque abbey church, restored at the end of the 10th century by Bishop Widerold, an important figure at the court of Otto 1, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
This Romanesque construction is representative of Ottonian architecture, whose roots are in the imperial art of Charlemagne.
Legend has it that Saint Trophime was the first bishop of Arles.
More information: Wikipédia

The village of Plobsheim, which lived from agriculture and fishing for a long time, has not preserved any ancient monuments from its rich Protestant past, although the Reformation was introduced here around 1555 by its lords, a branch of the Zorn. The main reason for this is that the church had become too small: 270 places for 1126 Protestant inhabitants in 1895. It had also been used for Catholic worship since 1684. It was then demolished and replaced by two larger buildings, one in neo-Romanesque style, on a Greek cross plan, for the Protestant parish (1898), the other for the Catholic parish. The church has Roethinger organs dating from 1898.

Chapel located on the east bank of the canal. The Via Columbani runs along the west bank, you can change banks from the M 222 bridge in Plobsheim.
In 1444, Adam Zorn, lord of Plobsheim, fights the Armagnacs and finds himself in trouble. He promises to build a chapel to Mary if he returns safe and sound. But once back, he forgets his promise. Legend has it that while hunting, he followed a dove and that the Virgin Mary appeared to him. He had the chapel built in an oak forest, an ancient druidic place of worship. The chapel, now classified as a historical monument, is remarkable for its polygonal choir with double cross ribs and for the small house adjoining it, the former residence of a hermit.

During your walk a big metal ball will catch your eye. It is one of the elements of Erstein's candy.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Alsace was the first French region to grow sugar beet and already had a number of sugar factories. The "Erstein Sugar Factory in Alsace" (Elsàssische Zuckerfabrik) was founded in 1893 by Hugo Zorn von Bülach, son of Baron François Zorn von Bülach, under-secretary of state for agriculture in France before 1870 and member of the Reichstag after the defeat of 1870.
The sugar refinery was able to continue its expansion after the War of 1870 and on its return to France in 1918.
In 2007, the sugar factory became part of a sugar cooperative consisting of several sugar factories in northern France and diversified into distillation products.
In April 2019, against a backdrop of the end of European sugar quotas leading to a drop in prices, the company announced a restructuring plan that would affect jobs at Erstein.