Colmar, founded in the ninth century, is mentioned as Columbarium Fiscum by the monk Notker Balbulus in a text dated 823.

This is the location where the Carolingian Emperor Charles the Fat held a diet in 884.

Colmar is granted the status of a free imperial city by Emperor Frederick II in 1226.

In 1354 it joins the Décapole city league.

The city adopts the Protestant Reformation in 1575, long after the northern neighbors of Strasbourg and Sélestat.

During the Thirty Years' War, it is taken by the Swedish army in 1632, who hold it for two years.

In 1548 Josel of Rosheim urges the Reichskammergericht court to repeal the Colmar market ban for Jewish merchants.The city is conquered by France under King Louis XIV in 1673 and officially ceded by the 1679 Treaties of Nijmegen.