Nowhere in Alsace can one find a more Alsatian town than Obernai. Take a stroll around the ramparts, look out upon the monochrome sea of the most beautiful roofs in the world and pause for a moment in front of the Convent School (l'Ecole des Soeurs).
There once stood the castle of Frédéric le Borgne, father of Emperor Barbarossa.
You can be sure that in this city a learned and loquacious guide could stop in front of each and every structure and deliver a lecture embellished with interpretations, souvenirs and anecdotes.
During folk festivals, when visitors see figures dressed in medieval costumes strolling through the streets and bustling about, they really feel that they're seeing the town's authentic inhabitants.
Visitors may feel merely like movie extras in their plain twentieth century garb.
In the streets and squares of Obernai, history can be seen from many perspectives, dreams have something to feed on and the inhabitants have peremptory reasons for ardently maintaining a town which has been able to keep alive all of the fairies of the Middle Ages as well as those even more sumptuously dressed of the Renaissance.
