Austria Travel Guide

The cultural contours of the Habsburg empire can be felt everywhere in Austria today, whether its while taking in a performance of Lipizzaner stallions, or crossing the Hofburg to admire a Rubens masterpiece in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Beyond this grand historical face, the classical works of composer Arnold Schnberg, inspired by Mozart, echo atonally across the country; music festivals like Bregenzer Festspiele are staged against spectacular lakeside or mountain backdrops, and artists like Klimt, Schiele and the radical Actionists feature in Viennas extraordinary MuseumsQuartier.

Travel in Austria is often a meandering journey through deeply carved valleys, along roads and railways cut improbably into the rocky flanks of mountains, and around picturesque lakes. But often the landscape is simply too rugged for road or rail: hiking and mountain biking is then the best way to reach isolated alpine meadows. Sometimes cable cars or dizzying chair-lifts offer an alternative way up, and come winter they bundle skiers and snowboarders onto the slopes. Austrias plentiful lakes are ideal for summer swimming, and in winter many freeze over for skating.

Austria is best known for its sugar-cake baroque church interiors, its historic palaces such as Schloss Belvedere and its Gothic masterpieces such as Stephansdom, but we dont often imagine it as a country with impressive contemporary architectural contours. A visit to Viennas MuseumsQuartier, to Ars Electronica in Linz, or a stroll alongside the illuminated slug-like Kunsthaus Graz casts Austria in a different light.

You can taste countries their food, their wines, their customs of years gone by. Viennas traditional coffee houses are perfect for breathing in the dark aromas of coffee in a homely atmosphere. Traditional Beisln (bistro pubs) are laced with the smell of goulash and other traditional dishes. Outside Vienna, regions such as the Waldviertel, the Danube Valley and southern Styria are places for rustic food and wine experiences in picturesque landscapes. Traditional Heurigen (wine taverns) abound almost everywhere places to explore local specialities while on on trips through Austrias character-filled gourmet and wine regions.

Zillertal Alps (), Tyrol
GARETH MCCORMACK / GETTY IMAGES

Why I Love Austria

By Anthony Haywood, Author

One day youre riding a forestry track in Carinthia, stopping to wash down a Brettljause (cold platter) with a cool beer in a meadow hut, the next youre combing the atmospheric alleys of the capital. The contrasts are what I love most about Austria. Its small, but the landscape changes quickly and dramatically, offsetting one experience of a place against another the boondocks in contrast to a large city like Vienna, or a cool alpine lake like Weissensee with the shallow-steppe Neusiedler See. And in Vienna itself, theres a stark contrast between the historic centre and the Vorstdte (inner suburbs), which I love exploring on walks at night.