Austria

Baroque streetscapes and imperial palaces set the stage for Vienna's artistic and musical masterpieces alongside its coffee-house culture and vibrant epicurean and design scenes.

Imperial Architecture

Vienna's imperial grandeur is the legacy of the powerful Habsburg monarchy. Their home for more than six centuries, the Hofburg palace complex, incorporates the Burgkapelle (Imperial Chapel), where the Vienna Boys' Choir sings Sunday Mass, and the famed Spanish Riding School, where Lipizzaner stallions perform elegant equine ballet, along with a trove of museums, including in the chandeliered Kaiserappartements (Imperial Apartments). Other immense palaces include the baroque Schloss Belvedere and the Habsburgs' 1441-room summer residence, Schloss Schönbrunn, while 19th-century splendours such as the neo-Gothic Rathaus (City Hall) line the magnificent Ringstrasse encircling the Innere Stadt (inner city).

Masterpiece-filled Museums

One of the Habsburgs' most dazzling Rinsgstrasse palaces, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, houses the imperial art collection. It's packed with priceless works by Old Masters, and treasures including one of the world's richest coin collections. Behind the Hofburg, the former imperial stables have been transformed into the innovative MuseumsQuartier, with a diverse ensemble of museums, showcasing 19th- and 20th-century Austrian art at the Leopold Museum to often-shocking avant-garde works at the contemporary MUMOK. Meteorites, fossils and prehistoric finds fill the Naturhistorisches Museum, while exquisite furnishings at the applied-arts Museum für Angewandte Kunst are also among the artistic feasts in store.

Soul-stirring Music

With a musical heritage that includes composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johann Strauss (father and son), Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, among countless others, Vienna is known as the City of Music. Its cache of incredible venues where you can catch performances today include the acoustically renowned Musikverein, used by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the gold-and-crystal main opera house, the Staatsoper, and the multistage Konzerthaus, as well as the dedicated home of the Vienna Boys' Choir, MuTh. Music comes to life through interactive exhibits at the captivating Haus der Musik museum.

Renowned Drinking & Dining

The Viennese appreciation of the finer things in life extends to its opulent coffee-house 'living rooms' serving spectacular cakes; its beloved pub-like Beisln dishing up hearty portions of Wiener schnitzel, Tafelspitz (prime boiled beef) and goulash; elegant restaurants; and its fine Austrian wines served in vaulted Vinothek (wine bar) cellars, and in rustic vine-draped Heurigen (wine taverns) in the vineyards fringing the city. Local and international delicacies fill the heady Naschmarkt stalls, and creative chefs are experimenting with local produce and fresh new flavour combinations in innovative, often repurposed venues.

Vienna

There’s no place like Tyrol for the ‘wow, I’m in Austria’ feeling. Nowhere else in the country is the downhill skiing as exhilarating, the après-ski as pumping, the wooden chalets as chocolate box, the food as hearty. Whether you’re schussing down the legendary slopes of Kitzbühel, cycling the Zillertal or hiking in the Alps with a big, blue sky overhead, the scenery here makes you glad to be alive. Welcome to a place where snowboarders brag under the low beams of a medieval tavern about awesome descents; where Dirndls and lederhosen have street cred; and where Volksmusik (folk music) features on club playlists. The Arlberg Alps give way to rolling dairy country in pleasingly low-key Vorarlberg. Spilling east to the glittering expanse of Bodensee (Lake Constance), this eastern pocket of the country swings happily between ecofriendly architecture on the cutting edge of design and deeply traditional hamlets with more cows than people.

Tyrol & Vorarlberg

Encircling Vienna, Lower Austria is a cradle of Austrian civilisation and a region offering visitors one of the country’s most lively cultural landscapes. Outdoor activities, some worthwhile museums, world-class wines, hearty food and a glimpse into the age of the Romans at Carnuntum make leaving the capital for a day or longer an attractive prospect. And naturally everyone's heard of the Danube River, which cuts a picturesque valley, the Wachau, through the region's northwest. A place of magnificent natural beauty, this is truly a European highlight for its vineyards, castles, abbeys and medieval villages. To the south of the capital, undervisited Burgenland is all but the typical Austria of the holiday brochures; you won't find soaring mountains, glacial lakes and bombastic architecture here, just bucolic flatlands spread like a well-tenderised schnitzel around the jewel in its crown – Neusiedler See – a shallow Mecca for water-sports fans and paddling toddlers alike.

Lower Austria & Burgenland

Austria’s second-largest province is a picturesque combination of culture, architecture, rolling hills, vine-covered slopes and mountains. Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, is Styria's photogenic and fabulously relaxed capital. Head south from Graz and you’re in wine country, dubbed ‘Styrian Tuscany’. This is also the land of Kürbiskernöl – the strong, dark pumpkin-seed oil ubiquitous in Styrian cooking.

The eastern stretch of Styria is dotted with rejuvenating thermal spas and centuries-old castles. If you’re a fan of the former, Bad Blumau is a mandatory stop, not only to take the waters but also to appreciate its unusual architecture, designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. If you prefer castles, Schloss Riegersburg is one of Austria’s best.

In the north and west, Styria’s landscape changes to cold, fast-flowing alpine rivers, towering mountains and carved valleys. Highlights are Admont Abbey, charming Murau and Erzberg’s open-cast mine. The very northwestern reaches of Styria stretch into Salzkammergut.

Styria

One of Austria’s smallest provinces, Salzburgerland is proof that size really doesn’t matter. Well, not when you have Mozart, Maria von Trapp and the 600-year legacy of the prince-archbishops behind you. This is the land that grabbed the world spotlight and shouted ‘visit Austria!’ with Julie Andrews skipping joyously down the mountainsides. This is indeed the land of crisp apple strudel, dancing marionettes and high-on-a-hilltop castles. This is the Austria of your wildest childhood dreams. Salzburg is every bit as grand as you imagine it: a baroque masterpiece, a classical-music legend and Austria’s spiritual heartland. But it is just the prelude to the region’s sensational natural beauty. Just outside the city, the landscape is etched with deep ravines, glinting ice caves, karst plateaux and mountains of myth – in short, the kind of alpine gorgeousness that no well-orchestrated symphony or yodelling nun could ever quite capture.

Salzburg & Salzburgerland

Few regions in Europe match the rugged beauty of Carinthia, and you’ll find that travelling here is often a serpentine journey. Carinthia can also, at times, seem larger than life, with its high peaks, gouged valleys and glistening lakes; the flamboyant show of opulence in the capital, Klagenfurt; and the resorts around the more famous of the region's 1270 pristine mountain lakes. The most popular of these lakes, such as the large Wörthersee, have waters warmed to a comfortable swimming temperature by thermal springs. Carinthia’s deep medieval heritage is another attraction – celebrated in picturesque walled villages such as Friesach and Gmünd, and impressive castles such as the hilltop fortress of Hochosterwitz. Many of the towns and villages nestled in Carinthia’s rolling hills hold an annual summer festival, with roving performers coming from neighbouring Italy and Slovenia to take part alongside the locals.

Carinthia

The Salzkammergut is a dramatic region of alpine and subalpine lakes, deeply carved valleys, rolling hills and rugged, steep mountain ranges rising to almost 3000m. Much of the region is remote wilderness, and even in the heavily visited parts, such as the Wolfgangsee and Mondsee, you’ll always find isolated areas where still, glassy waters provide limitless opportunities for boating, swimming, fishing or just sitting on the shore and skimming stones. The popular Hallstätter See, flanked by soaring mountains that offer great hiking, is arguably the most spectacular of the lakes. Salt was once the ‘white gold’ of the Salzkammergut, and the mines that made it famous now provide an interesting journey back in time to the settlers of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture, and to the Celts and Romans.

The Salzkammergut

Unfolding across the gently undulating countryside, this under-the-radar region has a taste of all that is great about Austria. For starters, there's the mighty Danube and a rich musical heritage, old-world coffee houses and castle-topped medieval towns, and resplendent Augustinian abbeys and spas.

Beyond the high-tech museums and avant-garde galleries of Linz lies a land in miniature filled with surprises: from rustic farmhouses serving home-grown Most (cider) to the limestone pinnacles of the Kalkalpen, where the elusive lynx roams and picturesque towns such as Steyr and Schärding are painted in a palette of ice cream–coloured hues. Whether you're among the mist-shrouded hills rippling towards the Czech Republic or wheat fields fading into a watercolour distance at dusk, you'll find these landscapes have a quiet, lingering beauty of their own.

Upper Austria

Tyrol is as pure alpine as Austria gets, with mountains that make you want to yodel out loud and patchwork pastures chiming with cowbells. After the first proper dump of snow in winter, it's a Christmas-card scene, with snow-frosted forests and skiers whizzing down some of the finest slopes in Europe. Summer is lower key: hiking trails thread high to peaks and mountain huts, while folk music gets steins swinging down in the valleys.

Tyrol

Providing popular day-trip material from Vienna, Lower Austria possesses the country's most vibrant cultural landscape, a combination of vineyards and art, monasteries and low wooded hills. Through this enchanting scene flows the mighty Danube which forms the famous Wachau – one of Europe's most fascinating valleys, watched over by castles and medieval villages.

Lower Austria

The joke 'If it's baroque, don't fix it' is a perfect maxim for Salzburg: the story-book Altstadt (old town) burrowed below steep hills looks much as it did when Mozart lived here 250 years ago. Beside the fast-flowing Salzach River, your gaze is raised inch by inch to graceful domes and spires, the formidable clifftop fortress and the mountains beyond. It's a backdrop that did the lordly prince-archbishops and Maria proud. Beyond Salzburg’s two biggest money-spinners – Mozart and The Sound of Music – hides a city with a burgeoning arts scene, wonderful food, manicured parks, quiet side streets where classical music wafts from open windows, and concert halls that uphold musical tradition 365 days a year. Everywhere you go, the scenery, the skyline, the music and the history send your spirits soaring higher than Julie Andrews' octave-leaping vocals.

Salzburg

Welcome to one of Vienna's hippest and most happening districts – Leopoldstadt, the city’s Jewish quarter. The neighbourhood has discovered newfound cool of late, with graffiti art, beach bars by the Danube Canal (Donaukanal) and a raft of enticing new boutiques, restaurants, galleries and edgy cafes hiding down its still-sleepy backstreets. Its centrepiece is the Prater where the Riesenrad of The Third Man fame spins amid all the fun of the fair. Further east is the Danube River and Danube Island recreation area.