Montagne Des Singes

Kintzheim, a wine village in the Alsace hills south of Strasbourg in north-eastern France, packs two of the region's most memorable animal encounters onto a single forested slope. Montagne Des Singes, the monkey mountain of this guide, is a reserve where Barbary macaques wander loose among the trees while visitors walk a marked route through their territory. A few minutes along the same ridge, the Volerie des Aigles flies eagles, vultures and other birds of prey against the backdrop of a ruined castle. Together they make one of the most family-friendly day trips you can build out of Strasbourg, and they sit conveniently beside the castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg and the wine villages of the Route des Vins.

What Is Montagne Des Singes And Where Is It?

Montagne Des Singes is a walk-through reserve at Kintzheim, in the Alsace Wine Route country south of Strasbourg, France, where a resident group of Barbary macaques lives free on a wooded hillside rather than behind bars. Visitors follow forest paths through the animals' own territory, with keepers on hand and strict rules about touching and feeding. The site shares its ridge with the Volerie des Aigles birds-of-prey park, and the whole outing is usually built around a car or guided day trip from Strasbourg.

The concept is what sets it apart from a zoo. There are no cages on the main route: the macaques cross the path, sit on railings and groom one another a few metres away, and the walk is designed so the animals choose how close they come. Keepers scatter feed and explain the group's social life as you go, which turns a simple stroll into something closer to a field observation. The species itself is a Barbary macaque, a hardy mountain monkey native to North Africa, and the Alsatian forest suits them well enough that the group has lived and bred on the hill for generations of animals.

Kintzheim the village is a classic wine-route settlement, half-timbered houses and vineyards, on the slopes that run down from the Vosges foothills toward the Alsace plain. Strasbourg lies to the north across that plain, and the village is close enough to the castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg that the two are standard companions on a single day's driving loop. That geography is the reason this pairing works so well: monkey park in the morning, castle after lunch, a wine village on the way home.

How To Get To Kintzheim From Strasbourg

The practical answer is by car or by guided day trip: Kintzheim sits on a hillside above the wine route, and the monkey park, the eagle park and Haut-Koenigsbourg castle cluster together in a way that rewards driving. Strasbourg is the natural base, and the route runs down the Alsace plain through wine country. Public transport to the village itself is thin, so check connections carefully or let a tour operator handle the wheel.

If driving the hills yourself sounds like work, book a guided Alsace day trip here.

Driving yourself gives you the full loop. You leave Strasbourg heading south, cross the flat plain where the Ill threads through the city, and pick up the wine road as the Vosges foothills rise. The road strings together the famous villages, and Kintzheim sits among them with the castle heights above. Parking at the monkey park is on site, and in the school holidays the car park fills early, so a morning start is the sensible plan. Fuel, toll-free departmental roads and vineyard scenery make the drive part of the pleasure rather than a chore.

Public transport is the weak link. The rail line down the plain serves the larger towns, but the hillside villages rely on sparse regional buses, and a connection that works on paper can involve a long wait between legs. If you are set on travelling without a car, the realistic options are a taxi from the nearest rail station for the final leg, or a guided day trip that includes Kintzheim or Haut-Koenigsbourg in its itinerary. Confirm the current bus timetables on the official regional transport pages before committing, because rural services change with the seasons.

A guided day trip also solves the one real friction of the day: the parks and the castle are close together but not walkable between, and a tour that strings them with a lunch stop in a village like Riquewihr does the logistics for you.

What The Monkey Park Visit Is Actually Like

The visit is a slow, shaded walk on forest paths with macaques all around you, governed by a handful of firm rules. You do not touch the animals, you do not feed them anything of your own, and you keep food, plastic bags and dangling straps out of sight, because the monkeys are clever and interested. Keepers stationed along the route run the formal feedings and answer questions. Most of an hour to ninety minutes on site is a comfortable allowance for the walk itself.

The path climbs gently through mature forest, and the macaques treat it as their living room. A youngster might bounce past your boots; an elder might sit at arm's length and study your rucksack with visible calculation. The keepers' talks are the heart of the experience: they explain the group's hierarchies, the breeding programme and the conservation backstory of the species, which is endangered in its North African home range. Children tend to stay rapt for the whole circuit, which is not something every Alsatian attraction can claim.

The rules exist for the animals' welfare and they are enforced without fuss. Popcorn handed out at controlled feeding points is the sanctioned way to give food, and only when a keeper says so. Bags are often asked to be carried closed, and picnic food stays in the car. None of this is onerous, and it keeps the reserve genuinely wild in feel: the macaques are not performing, they are simply living where you happen to be walking.

The Volerie Des Aigles: Kintzheim's Eagle Park

The Volerie des Aigles is a birds-of-prey centre on the same Kintzheim ridge, built around the ruins of the old castle, where eagles, vultures, falcons and owls are flown in open-air displays a few metres above the audience. The shows run to a daily schedule in season, and the setting, rocky terraces above the vineyards, does half the work of making the birds look magnificent. It pairs naturally with the monkey park for a full Kintzheim morning or afternoon.

The displays are the draw. A handler launches a vulture from the castle wall and it sweeps the amphitheatre on broad wings; falcons are worked at speed; owls finish the programme in near silence. Between displays you walk the aviaries, where the resident birds that cannot be flown live out their retirements, and the keepers talk through the injury and rescue stories behind several of the residents. It is a conservation outfit as much as a show, and the tone is more natural-history lecture than circus.

Photographers should position themselves high in the seating with the light behind them, and everyone should arrive before the published display time rather than at it, since the seating fills on busy days. The ruin itself frames everything: weathered walls, a green valley, and the wine-route plain stretching back toward the line of the Rhine. Combined tickets for the two Kintzheim parks are sometimes offered; check the parks' own pages for the current arrangement before you drive out.

If your trip starts or finishes with time in Strasbourg itself, a short guided walk is an efficient way to absorb the old city before or after the hills. The box below offers one with a local guide.

Pairing Kintzheim With Haut-Koenigsbourg And The Wine Route

The strongest pairing is Haut-Koenigsbourg castle, which stands on the ridge directly above Kintzheim and shares the same approach road, followed by a wine-route village such as Riquewihr or Ribeauvillé on the way back toward Strasbourg. The castle gives you the panoramic view of the whole day, the villages give you lunch and a glass of riesling, and the loop drops you back on the plain with the afternoon still intact. In high season, go early: the castle car park is the pinch point.

Haut-Koenigsbourg is the region's flagship fortress, a restored mountain castle with rampart walks and a terrace that takes in the Alsace plain, the Black Forest line on clear days and the Vosges crest behind you. Because it sits practically above the monkey park, the sequence writes itself: macaques in the cool of the morning, castle after an early lunch, then a slow roll down the wine road. Allow the better part of the day for the three together, and book castle tickets online in summer if the official site offers it.

The wine villages need no itinerary so much as a shortlist. Riquewihr is the postcard, walls and pastel half-timbering and tasting rooms everywhere; Riquewihr's neighbour Ribeauvillé is quieter and has its own fountain square; Kaysersberg stretches along a river with a ruined tower above it. Eguisheim, a little further south, is a concentric circle of lanes that may be the prettiest of them all. Each has winstubs and cellars, and each rewards an unhurried hour more than a checklist sprint.

A guided version of this loop is worth a look if you would rather not drive, and one itinerary pairs Colmar, Riquewihr and Haut-Koenigsbourg castle in a single day out of Strasbourg. The operator's live listing carries the current price, schedule and inclusions.

There is a heavier option in the same hills. The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp site, high in the Vosges above the wine route, is a sobering half-day that some travellers combine with the region's lighter sights and others prefer to give a day of its own. The guided tour below covers the transfer from Strasbourg and the memorial site with a proper framework.

When To Go: Seasons And Weather On The Hillside

The parks are outdoor experiences, so the season matters more here than for a museum day in Strasbourg. The hillside is at its best from late spring to early autumn, when the forest canopy is full and the macaques are active; winter brings reduced opening and bare trees, and the eagle displays thin out with the timetable. Strasbourg's climate is semi-continental, with a July mean maximum of 26.4 C and a January mean maximum of 5.2 C, so pack for the season.

The climate table below is drawn from the Meteo-France 1991-2020 normals for the Strasbourg-Entzheim station, the standard reference for this corner of France. The hillside at Kintzheim runs a touch cooler than the plain in summer and colder in winter, but the pattern holds: warm, occasionally thundery summers, cold grey winters, and rain distributed across every month of the year. May through July carries the highest rain-day counts, so a light waterproof earns its place in the bag even in the good months.

Tickets, Food And Planning For The Day

Buy or check park tickets on the parks' own pages before driving out, because prices, combined offers and seasonal opening are all set there and change year to year. Take cash or a card for the on-site kiosks, plan lunch in a village winstub rather than at the park gates, and leave the picnic in the car until after the monkey walk, since food in bags is exactly what the reserve's rules ask you to avoid. A full day out of Strasbourg needs an early start.

The two Kintzheim parks are ticketed separately in the ordinary arrangement, with a combined offer sometimes available, and the eagle park's display schedule is effectively a second timetable to plan around: check both when you choose your arrival time. The parks close for a winter break and run reduced days in the shoulder seasons, so a visit outside the summer holidays should be anchored to the official opening calendar rather than to assumption. Haut-Koenigsbourg sells its own tickets separately again, and the castle's official page is the place to confirm hours and any timed-entry rules.

Food is the easy part. The wine villages between the parks and the main road are dense with winstubs, the Alsatian taverns serving tarte flambée, choucroute and baeckeoffe, and a long lunch in Riquewihr or Ribeauvillé is the natural hinge between the morning animals and the afternoon castle. Reserve in July and August if you want a terrace table, and note that many village kitchens close for a break in the afternoon, so a 12:30 seating is safer than a 14:00 one.

One seasonal note worth flagging: if your Kintzheim day trip is part of a December visit, Strasbourg's Christmas market runs in the city in parallel. The city posts each edition's dates on its Christmas site, but the usual pattern opens the market in the last week of November and runs it to 24 December; the 2025 edition ran 26 November to 24 December and drew 3.05 million visitors. Confirm the current dates on the city's Christmas site, and expect hillside parks to be closed or reduced in that season. A dedicated Christmas-markets day tour out of Strasbourg is one way to see the wider Alsatian markets without driving.

Starting And Ending The Day In Strasbourg

The clean structure is a Strasbourg morning, a Kintzheim middle and a village evening: a short guided walk through the Grande Île to get the city under your skin, the drive south for macaques, eagles and the castle, then a slow return along the wine road with dinner in a village or back in the city. Strasbourg's old centre is compact enough that two hours with a guide covers the cathedral quarter, Petite France and the river bridges, the orientation a first-time visitor wants before heading for the hills.

The city rewards that orientation more than people expect. The cathedral's single spire and its astronomical clock, the 12:30 automaton show ticketed at 4 EUR on the day only, the half-timbered lanes of Petite France and the Ponts Couverts with the Barrage Vauban terrace above them: these are all within a short walk of one another, and a local guide stitches them into a narrative of the Franco-German borderland that no plaque will give you. The two-hour historic walk below is a strong candidate for the first morning, and the operator's live listing shows the current price and departure point.

Check availability

For the wider planning picture, the rest of this Strasbourg Travel Guide site maps the city's quarters, the wine route and every major day trip from the Black Forest to Basel: the Strasbourg Travel Guide homepage is the index to all of it. Kintzheim's own page on the Alsace wine route itinerary sits alongside dedicated guides to Haut-Koenigsbourg castle, the villages of Riquewihr and its walls, Ribeauvillé's fountain square and the Route des Crêtes ridge drive, each of which can carry a second day in the same hills.

However you assemble it, car or coach, monkeys first or castle first, the Kintzheim hillside is one of the few Alsace outings that satisfies a six-year-old and a wine enthusiast on the same afternoon. Check the park calendars, book the castle in peak weeks, and leave room in the plan for the glass you did not intend to have in Riquewihr.

Common Questions About Montagne Des Singes