We Took A Detour Into France And Found Belle’s Village

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Sometimes, travel is about happy coincidences.

Things you didn’t plan. Like ending up in Salzburg during a local festival. Or wandering into a London pub during someone’s big birthday party and somehow being handed free food, drinks and a piece of cake.

I’d put our visit to the Alsace region of France in that same category.

We had planned parts of our trip through Germany, but our time in the Black Forest was much more freeform. We didn’t have a fixed schedule, but more of a list of possible destinations. Where we went depended on the weather, how we felt that day and how much driving we wanted to do. It was very low-key.

So when we were sitting at dinner the night before our planned drive toward Basel, I mentioned that we could drive back through France and maybe stop in one of the villages along the way. We’d seen plenty of villages already, but that part of France didn’t look quite like what we’d been seeing in Germany. They were more colorful, more storybook-looking — the kind of place that feels like it could have inspired Belle’s village in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Hmmm, Beauty and the Beast. Knowing that Disney animators often take inspiration from real-life places when creating movie settings, I wondered if any of those places were nearby?

After a quick search, I had my answer: yes. And they weren’t very far out of the way.

Our First Stop: Riquewihr

Our first stop was Riquewihr.

If you’ve ever searched for “storybook villages in France,” there’s a good chance Riquewihr has shown up. It’s often mentioned as one of the places that helped inspire the look of Belle’s village in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and once we walked through the gate, it was easy to see why.

Colorful half-timbered buildings lined the cobblestone streets. Flower boxes hung from windows. Shop signs swung over doorways. Every few steps, there was another building that looked like it had been designed by someone who thought subtlety was overrated — in the best possible way.

It was like stepping into a storybook.

Now, Riquewihr is definitely not some undiscovered village where we were the only people wandering around. This is a tourist spot, and the town knows it. There were buses parked in the nearby lots, plenty of souvenir shops, restaurants and wine stores, and a steady stream of people walking through town.

But it also didn’t feel difficult to visit. The village is easy to navigate, with one main street running through the center. Since we did zero research, this was perfect for us. We started walking, and once we hit the end of the road, we turned around and walked back.

Wine, Shops And A Nutella Crêpe

We stopped in a few shops, looked at the storefronts, took too many pictures and eventually found ourselves at a wine tasting. It seemed suitable as we drove through several vineyards on the way to the village.

Alsace is wine country, after all, and it felt wrong to leave without at least trying some of what the region is known for. A short tasting turned into picking up a few bottles to bring home, which is usually how these things go.

I also made one very important stop: a Nutella crêpe.

When I saw a crepe stand, I had to relive a memory from my first trip to Paris. There was a stand on the corner of our hotel, and I’m pretty sure we ended up there almost every evening.

So when I saw crêpes in Riquewihr, I wasn’t passing that up. It was as good — and as messy — as I remembered.

But Something Was Still Missing

Riquewihr was a great stop, and I can understand why it shows up on so many “beautiful villages in Alsace” lists. But for us, the connection to Beauty and the Beast was more of a general feeling than a specific building or place. It had the look. It had the colorful buildings, the cobblestone streets and the storybook setting. But I wanted something more.

So I kept digging, and that led me to Eguisheim. Since it was only a 20-minute or so side trip, we plugged it into the GPS and off we went. I’m so glad we did.

While it’s got a similar look, it has a completely different layout.

Instead of one long street running through town, Eguisheim is arranged in a more circular pattern, with narrow lanes curving around the village and eventually leading toward the center. That made it more fun to wander because we weren’t just walking up one street and back down again. We could explore side streets on our way to the central square.

There, next to the church, was the fountain.

Not just any fountain. The fountain that many people point to when comparing Eguisheim to Belle’s village in Beauty and the Beast.

That was the moment when the connection felt less like a vague “storybook village” comparison and more like something we could actually see. The church, the fountain, the surrounding buildings and the way the square opened up all had that familiar feel.

I later found a video comparing parts of Eguisheim with scenes from Beauty and the Beast, and that made the connection even easier to see. This house is often pointed to as a possible inspiration for Belle’s house, and you can see the similarities.

Was this the exact fountain Disney copied, or the real-life inspiration for Belle’s house? I’m not sure. But standing there, it was easy to understand why people make the comparison.

Final Thought

We didn’t plan our day around visiting Alsace. I hadn’t even seriously thought about going there until the night before, when we were sitting at dinner and looking at the route back from Basel.

That’s what made it even more memorable. As we drove back to the hotel, we all talked about how amazing the day had been. And the funny thing was, none of it had been on the schedule even 24 hours earlier.

Sometimes the places you plan for are great. But sometimes the places you visit on a whim end up being the ones you’re still talking about years later.

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