Going a bit further afield, we toured the commune historically known as Rappoltsweiler / Ràppschwihr after the eighth century town passed from the ownership of the Bishopric of Basel to the countship of Rappoltstein (Ribeaupierre), the hereditary king charged with the protection and patronage of the itinerant minstrels of Alsace, who paid a busking tribute to their lord in exchange—the office of the Pfeiferkönig eventually was inherited by the ranks of the prince-electors of Bavaria, and made an annal pilgrimage to their sainted patronness Maria von Dusenbach, a chapel in the Capuchin cloister complex just outside of Ribeauvillé dedicated to the Presentation of Jesus. The Gothic centre with preserved medieval houses is overlooked by a primeval forest (re-seeded much later in its history with giant sequoia—see also—and containing the largest stand outside of North America) and the ensemble of three ruined castles, Saint-Ulrich, Girsberg and Haut Rappoltstein.
Next we visited Hunawihr on the way back to Riquewihr—also with a beautifully preserved layout from the 1300s—it was named after the residence of another Frankish lord called Huno, built on the foundations of a Gallo-Roman villa. Renowned for her piety and charity, the sainted lady of the estate, Huna, took it upon herself to do the laundry for the poor and the sick in the fountain at the base of the village, imbuing the clean clothes with powers to restore the health of the ill—with one instance of the dirty wash-water transformed into wine during a particularly bad harvest year. The hilltop fortified church (Kirchenburg, l'église fortifiée) in view of the legendary spring became a pilgrimage site and became, like many of the sacred buildings of the region what’s called a simultaneum, following the Treaty of Westphalia that guaranteed religious liberties for the people of Alsace, and holds both Catholic mass and Protestant services.
