In Review: Strasbourg's Cour du Corbeau Hotel

Housed in a 16th-century half-timbered house, it's alluring for history buffs-- but not exactly rustic.

The courtyard at the Hotel Cour du Corbeau. Courtney Traub/All rights reserved

Dear Subscribers,

It was around this time last year that we headed to Strasbourg (full guide here) , hoping to demystify a French regional capital that either (a. gets reduced to the slight kitsch of its annual Christmas markets or (b. is too often unfairly cast by Parisians as being dreary, staid and boring.

I know better by now to never, ever believe Parisians’ opinions of other places in France— especially the major cities. I was once guilty of this too, admittedly, but denizens of the capital are prone to casting anything outside of Paris as “province”, a term that’s more than a mere geographical descriptor. It’s typically a snobby way of saying that any place that isn’t Paris is, well, provincial. Lagging behind the times. Anything but cosmopolitan and cool.

So the Parisian in me is always surprised when I find those preconceptions to be n’importe quoi (utter hogwash). And this was certainly the case for Strasbourg, a city that I found to be stunningly forward-thinking, progressive and diverse, even while its architectural and cultural heritage is everywhere visible.

I can go on about this blinkered Parisian snobbery for ages. But today, I wanted to focus on one aspect of our stay in Strasbourg that has stuck with me, especially as autumn approaches and I recall a couple of wonderful days staying at the Cour du Corbeau Hotel.

{Note: this is not a sponsored post, nor was the hotel aware that I intended to write about our stay. Just my objective thoughts— or at least as objective as is humanly possible.}

This is a four-star hotel that’s located just steps from the banks of the Ill river, and housed within the walls of a 16th-century building with meticulously renovated features. The most striking of these are probably its half-timbered exteriors in deep wood and warm cream, and an inner courtyard so gingerbread-cute-yet-elegant that it seems to emblematize the Strasbourgeois look.

As early as 1528, a hotel operated here under the name “Zum Rappen”. But it was likely a trading post or inn even prior to that.

A prestigious inn remained open on the site for three centuries, before shutting down in the mid 19th century. A well-known local glass manufacturer used the building for decades following that closure, and kept the building in decent shape over the decades.

But it was only in 2007 that an extensive renovation project was initiated to restore some of the building’s finest features, such as wood carvings and balusters, notably in the courtyard area. In 2009, it reopened as the hotel it is today.