The most beautiful cities in Austria

Welcome to one of Europe’s most beautiful countries. Austria’s landscapes, regions and townscapes provide almost the full range of European variety in the centre of the continent. Austria is often associated, rightly, with winter sports, but there is so much more on offer. Its alpine areas are rugged and picturesque, but that’s far from being the whole story.

Architecture

Austria is most closely associated with the Baroque style, which was dominant in the late centuries of the Holy Roman empire. Its leading Austrian practitioners were Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Jakob Prandtauer, Pietro Francesco Carlone and Johann Michael Prunner.

But Vienna was also a force in Art Nouveau design, especially the Wiener Secession movement within the German variant Jugendstil, sometimes called Sezessionstil. The names Otto Wagner, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Adolf Loos were the most prominent among a generation of architects in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The abstract painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser increasingly worked in architecture from the 1950s and rebelled against the rationalism of the straight line. He championed an ecological, individualist ethic and designed a Vienna apartment block now known at the Hundertwasserhaus, featuring bright colours, uneven floors and foliage growing from the windows and roof.

Outwardly late medieval structures are fewer than in Germany, but in cities such as Innsbruck and centuries-old towns such as Krems an der Donau, Dürnstein and Feldkirch it is still possible to find Gothic town buildings. Medieval castles still dominate townscapes in Salzburg, Kufstein, Feldkirch and Werfen, while a significant castle ruin stands above Dürnstein.

Vienna, Salzburg and Linz offer huge variety in architecture. Linz has a Modernist profile in public buildings along the Danube and Graz’s variety of city centre architecture was a leading factor in its world-heritage listing. The mixture of historical and Historicist buildings in Feldkirche and Eisenstadt make them fascinating places to walk.

Romanesque

Vienna: Michaelerkirche, Ruprechtskirche
Linz: Martinskirche (with Gothic)
Salzburg: Franziskanerkirche (with Gothic)
Krems an der Donau: Gozzoburg

Gothic

Vienna: St Stephan, Maria am Gestade, Minoritenkirche
Salzburg: Franziskanerkirche, Stift Nonnberg, Bürgerspitalkirche St Blasius
Graz: Dom
Innsbruck: Hofkirche, Stadtturm
Krems: Piaristenkirche

Renaissance

Vienna: Hofburg Amalienburg wing, Hofburg Schweizertor
Graz: Landhaus
Linz: Landhaus, Kremsmünsterer Haus
Innsbruck: Goldenes Dachl, Schloß Ambras
Krems: Großes Sgraffitohaus
Stein an der Donau: Mauthaus