The Ancienne Douane — old customs house — is the most important secular building in old Colmar, dating from 1480. Until the Revolution it functioned as both a customs hall (downstairs) and a meeting place for the deputies of the Décapole, the league of ten free imperial cities of upper Alsace, who gathered upstairs in a large vaulted chamber. The two functions explain the building's confusing local nicknames: Koïfhus, from the German Kaufhaus (merchants' hall), and Ancienne Douane.
The polychrome glazed-tile roof, repaired several times, follows the Burgundian pattern. The square in front — Place de l'Ancienne Douane — is the most charming small square in Colmar, with a bronze statue of General Rapp by Bartholdi (one of Napoleon's officers, born in the city) and a café-fringed edge that fills up in the evening.