While Vienna is well-known for its festive season and Christmas magic, many believe that the month of January is usually the dullest of the year in the Austrian capital. Once the Christmas markets are over and Winter lingers on, there is little to do around town – that is, at least, the prejudice of the general public.

However, the Vienna Tourist Board does not agree. According to them, the new year brings all kinds of wonders to the capital, including balls, ice skating, Viennese coffee culture, sausage stands, and wine taverns. But who better to judge whether Vienna is ‘dull’ than the citizens of Dull themselves?

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A personalised programme and a royal stay

Therefore, all 100-and-some inhabitants of the small Scottish village of Dull have now received a wax-sealed invitation and Viennese goodie bags from the Vienna Tourist Board. The invite includes a weekend stay at the Hotel Imperial, where celebrities such as Queen Elizabeth II and The Rolling Stones have spent the night in the past.

“We thought it was a scam because it’s so extraordinary. We really had to think very carefully, is this real? Who dreamt this up? What person in Vienna thought about this and why? But when we realised it was real, we just got really interested in it and excited”, Dull resident Ricky told STV News.

Aside from the hotel stay, all inhabitants of Dull will also be given a personalised itinerary based on their interests. Tours of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum, dance classes, ice skating, a tour of Schönbrunn Palace, and even a meeting with the UK Ambassador to Austria, Lindsay Skoll, are part of what is possible.

Members of the Vienna Tourist Board have delivered invitations to the entire village of Dull in Perthshire!

Viennese officials hand-delivered invitations to their home city on Saturday, gifting residents slices of Austrian cake pic.twitter.com/3VFueR6X2E

— The National (@ScotNational) December 1, 2025

“We’re proud of our museums, our concerts, our balls and our winter magic – but we also enjoy a good sense of humour. January is often considered the dullest month of the calendar, which is exactly why we wanted to bring Dull to Vienna. It’s the perfect opportunity to show how vibrant this season can truly be. We hope many residents will join us, and we’re eager to hear their expert judgment. With this initiative, the Vienna Tourist Board is calling on the residents of Dull to confirm: Vienna is not ‘dull’ – not even in January”, Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board, said in a statement. What the outcome of the marketing campaign will be – and whether or not Vienna turns out to be Dull – remains to be seen. Many residents of the village have, however, confirmed they will be heading to Vienna in January to judge the Austrian capital for themselves.

L’article Vienna invites 100 Scottish villagers to decide whether the Austrian capital is ‘Dull’ or not est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

The move follows Hungarian carrier Wizz Air’s cancellation of flights to the Austrian capital. Both budget airlines say Austria’s increasing airport fees and €12 aviation tax affect the business case for flying there. In addition to the cuts at Billund, Santander, and Tallinn, Ryanair announced last week it would be closing down its operations at three Spanish airports (Tenerife North, Vigo and Santiago de Compostela), and slashing up to a million Spanish seats.

Echoing the language already used in disputes with Belgian, French, and Spanish authorities, Ryanair has dubbed the Austrian aviation tax “harmful.” The low-cost airline’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, told media at a conference that he was attempting to exert policy pressure on the Austrian government.

His proposals would see 10 new Boeing 737 8200 aircraft added to the country’s schedules by 2030. The growth plan, claimed to be worth €1 billion, would also entail 40 new routes and boost annual passenger numbers to 12 million, creating more than a thousand new jobs. If, on the other hand, Ryanair’s demands are ignored, he said: “Vienna will continue to decline until it gets its act together.”

The managing director of Laudamotion, a low-cost carrier acquired and rebranded by former Austrian race driver Niki Lauda, which has been entirely owned and operated under wet lease to Ryanair since 2020, agrees with O’Leary. Andreas Gruber said that Austria’s aviation sector is not aligned with its neighbours: “The costs are too high. Countries like Hungary, Slovakia, or the Czech Republic don’t have this.”

Ryanair has frequently called airport charges in various countries “excessive” and frames national aviation taxes as an attack “on ordinary passengers” while threatening to move its own operations to different markets. However, its recent withdrawal from Spain may come to be seen as an own goal, as it appears to have handed a market opportunity to competitors.

Vueling has said it will add 160,000 seats to its winter schedule, including at airports Ryanair is abandoning, as part of the carrier’s “ambition to establish ourselves as the key airline in the domestic market, as well as in major corridors between Spain and Europe,” according to route planning director Jordi Pla.

In addition, Canarian flag carrier Binter is set to boost its Tenerife Norte seat availability by 33%, Iberia Express is adding five percent, and Volotea and Wizz Air are also said to be in the market for extra seats.

L’article Ryanair threatens “decline” for Vienna airport if demands over fees not met est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Flight OS 434 took off from Palma de Mallorca at around 4 pm yesterday and had a smooth journey until almost reaching its destination in Vienna. Not long before reaching the Austrian capital however, while flying over Hartberg, at an altitude of 6,000 metres, the plane, an Airbus A320, encountered a severe hailstorm that had not been detected by the weather radar.

The hail almost fully torn off the aircraft’s nose, leaving holes in the panels that remained attached. The first two layers of the windshield were also heavily damaged, but remained in their place, not causing any loss of pressure. Panels covering the engines were also affected.

Despite the extensive damage and the broken windshield leaving the pilots with almost no visibility outside, the plane’s engines and controls remained intact, so the pilots were able to safely land the aircraft around 6 pm at Vienna Airport, where air traffic controllers gave them priority over all other flights after learning about the issues.

Noone aboard suffered any injuries and passengers were able to deboard the plane normally, through the stairs. They were then taken to the terminal on a bus. “The aircraft was able to land safely at Vienna-Schwechat Airport. All passengers on the flight were uninjured. The safety of our passengers and our crews is Austrian Airlines’ top priority”, airline spokesperson Anita Kiefer told Austrian Wings magazine.

“I think we were about 20 minutes from landing when we got into a cloud of hail and thunderstorm, and the turbulence started. We could definitely feel the hail coming down on the plane and it was quite loud and ofc super rocky for a minute”, Emmeley Oakley, a passenger on the flight, told ABC News via text message. “It wasn’t until we exited that we saw the nose was missing! The pilots really did an excellent job keeping things as smooth and safe as they could.”

“The Austrian Airlines technical team has already been entrusted with the specific damage assessment of the aircraft in question”, Kiefer said, estimating the damage to hundreds of thousands of euros. The Airbus has already been in service for 23 years, so the airline and manufacturer will have to decide whether or not the aircraft is still worth repairing at this point or if it’s time for it to retire.

L’article Austrian Airlines plane lands safely despite losing nose in severe hailstorm est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

As a child, Florian’s artistic debut was catalysed by looking at piles of his parents’ photos and feeling something about them that worked and something that didn’t, that there was energy in them that needed his help to come out. He painted over one after the other to augment the photos and liberate their energy. 

His artistic creation began with reformed landscapes and continued, with an ever-evolving language, threading in more and more elements. It is only natural to search for the physical in a landscape, to seek to recognise something represented. The landscape with the blue sky below –Picturesque (2014), I take to be of a scrap metal yard, with a skeleton of an abandoned truck on the right of the middle, nose down towards the bottom centre. Above it could be a twisted abandoned torso of an electricity transmission pylon. 

The second Picturesque is a gold-skied landscape – presumably for pollution or Saharan sandstorms visiting Europe. The lines are less jagged, more curved, but I can’t make out anything, almost seeing fish skeletons, a bird, but then I notice the scratched-in word Ferrari; even high-class luxury turns to scrap. We start to see that Nitsch’s landscapes go beyond what one can discern in space by threading in written language as a new dimension and a new painter’s brush.

Zooming in now. Bieraufbütten (2016) below presents an etched pattern on a cut and rolled out beer can and the print of the form. The back of the can has become a landscape, almost a street map, yet the words are not street names, but Go, Ya, OK, Yes,  and HeHe. We are pulled in and Florian has a little laugh while at the same time giving us the key to his work: physical structure, language, recycled materials from life form a new landscape.

Florian Nitsch’s landscapes evolved and adapted to his stay in New York. Thinkpig (2017) again has a strong grid structure, this time steel girders from a construction site. The red diagonal line suggests “No Entry”. The yellow rectangle at the top right are the lights from a home. A man just manages to look out. The text above says “outputputput”. The man’s face is only just above the girder, implying that people are barely keeping their heads above water, ceaselessly creating output to the insistent economic rhythm of put put put. There is another face to his left, Sigmund Freud’s from an old Austrian 50 shilling bill – creating a double nod to Austrian history, yet another layer in the artwork. But there is a cross on the banknote’s face. The money has been cancelled. Is Thinkpig a statement against productivist capitalism and social injustice? There is also the word “SAME” repeated before it becomes “SHAME”. A criticism of shopping chains and globalisation of culture? A patch of grass from Central Park is in a small rectangle at the bottom centre. There is a bit of natural landscape in Florian Nitsch’s socio-cultural landscape, but it has been bleached black and white and is only a small patch, a memory, not enough to have a picnic on – simply what is left after developers’ and town planner’s penchant for soil-sealing for profitable real estate. Is this a criticism of the impacts of urbanisation on nature? What do you perceive? 

Note that sometimes Florian Nitsch has music to accompany the paintings – this soundscape adds to the landscape. Indeed, he often does live performances, painting, using an iPad and projecting onto the walls while a drummer plays. They feed off each other with the art driven by the music and the music by the drawing in a hypnotic symbiosis, adding a whole other layer to the socio-cultural landscape. Music becomes a type of light or paint.

Nature sometimes features explicitly. In the artwork below, the silhouette of the trees creates the structure, an organic grid. Oddly, the blue and white spaces between the trees almost look like giant stylised letters, creating a word I found impossible to decipher. The colours, however, made me think of Picasso’s Guernica, which brought a whole load of energy to the painting (and a pleasant surprise when I learnt that the title referred to Guernica). Second, while it looks flat as there is no geometrical perspective, there are layers: at the top right behind the tree, it could be the moon, the blue is the sky, the white on the sky feels like the blind spots when we or cameras stare at the sun. Then the trees. Real organic life in black. In the front line, the fluid handwriting suggests our intervention and cultural reality. But it draws on the trees, which are black, perhaps not just waiting for spring but dead, only a memory of life and now a canvas. Is this painting a Guernica of humankind’s attitude towards nature? Again, my lens possibly creates a meaning that is not yours.

Now to one of my favourites, and indeed the artist’s – a dark artwork despite the vibrant gold. It is titled Flo’s Medusa – which suggests Florian’s nemesis, i.e. look at this and die. It is indeed an icon of death as it is inspired by the Pieta, of Jesus in the arms of Mary Magdalene. He is painted in holy golden light, but the angles of the lines suggest anger and the pain of sacrifice. He is falling past a grid of windows of our society, with each window, its own story. I look again –  Flo’s Medusa could be a crime scene, with the body contours declaring humanity’s crime, or a statement of Christ’s sacrifice for each family as he falls past life after life set up as an urban skyscraper grid.  

An artwork has as many meanings as those standing before it. But that shouldn’t give us a license to forget to ask the artist. Flo’s Medusa is also a reference to the graveyard in the Mediterranean, a lament at the death of all those crossing in search of a better life but left floating in the cold dark waters, the gold of their lives seeping out of their bodies. Judging by the death count, Flo’s Medusa, the Mediterranean, is a monster far more terrifying than the Medusa from Greek mythology. We thought the Greek gods were cruel…

This landscape of urban life is again reflected and developed further in Égal (2019), focusing on the richness of life (each rectangle is full) and a socio-cultural critique. Nitsch alludes to égalité (equality) through the word Égal by losing some letters. But Égal means both equal and, through connotations of the use of the word in the German Das ist mir Egal (It is all the same to me), suggests not caring. Perhaps a statement of the weakening social bonds in many “modern” societies. The grid creates and comprises thirty-six rectangular landscape parts where few interact with each other. Parallel lives. Égal is a statement of today in another way: with the excess of information streaming and screaming at us from too many screens all at once, everywhere, all the time. It is a statement of multi-faceted contemporary reality, which can be an energising joy or simply too much. So Égal could equally be a celebration or a cry beseeching us to go back to calmer landscapes and life. A moment’s peace from our addiction to excess.

Finally, we get to the falling people against the pattern made by an escalator, hinting at the structure of the Twin Towers and a “homage” to the tragedy of September 11^th through a socio-cultural landscape one hopes never repeats itself. The energetic lines communicate the pain, the transparency and the white, the loss. 

Many of the elements of Florian Nitsch’s artwork return – the Pieta, the falling people, the gridwork, the writing, the small, bleached rectangle of grass. Each landscape doesn’t have a unity of space such as a particular landscape, but is a composite where meaning and memory replace simple 3D space, use and create their own space. Furthermore, each work is not only standing on its own merits but is part of a broader conversation through the range of repeat icons in different words of art, at different moments, in different places, to different audiences. So, the pictural socio-cultural landscape keeps growing. With the combination of music in co-creation, the landscape expands further, both folding in the music as an addition to form and colour and creating a soundscape in time– the three dimensions of space (four if you include transparency that brings in what lies on the other side), plus time, plus language, plus cultural-economic icons, personal memories (a grandfather’s postcard), music: so more like seven, eight, nine dimensions as a poetic palimpsest, or better yet, a landscape symphony. Art that we often think of as a static pictural representation, a moment’s capture of something special, can be much more and release the energies waiting for us.

This was just a taster of Florian Nitsch’s socio-cultural landscapes, which are visually attractive and steeped in meaning. Keep an eye out for his exhibitions and hypnotic happenings on his YouTube channel and website.

L’article Florian Nitsch’s socio-cultural landscapes  est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

“Our airport is growing, passenger volume is increasing, and we are continuously among the best globally in terms of our service quality. Thanks to the new Southern Terminal Expansion project, we are laying the groundwork for Vienna Airport to join the ranks of the top airports and achieve 5-Star status. This project is yet another airport development milestone following the record results achieved in 2019 and the second highest passenger volume in the airport’s history in 2023”, explained Julian Jäger, Member of the Management Board of Flughafen Wien AG, the company managing Vienna Airport.

The new building will span over a surface of 70,000 square metres and is planned to be operational by 2027 and will use Building Information Modelling (BIM) to be able to stick to that timeframe. The €420 million Southern Terminal Expansion, as the new project is called, will include no less than 30 new food and shopping outlets, several lounges designed with ‘Viennese elegance’, 18 bus gates in order to assure a better connection with the airport and new centralised and state-of-the-art security controls. By doing so, Vienna Airport hopes to join some of the world’s best airports in terms of service quality.

“It will be fully financed from our future cash flows, without the need for any loans. Our construction management was completely reorganised in 2012. Since then, it has successfully demonstrated its construction competence within the context of numerous large projects, all of which were finished on time and on budget. When it comes to planning and project management, we rely on our high level of competence in leveraging digitalisation and Building Information Modelling (BIM). In this way we can not only monitor the construction process on a daily basis, but also ensure adherence to costs and the planned timetable”, said Günther Ofner, Flughafen Wien AG Management Board Member responsible for overseeing construction.

L’article Vienna Airport starts €420 million terminal expansion est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

In 1791, Count Franz Anton Walsegg commissioned the composer to write a piece of music in honour of his late wife, who had died in the castle a year earlier. However, it seemed like the building was cursed, as Mozart died before finishing the composition. His student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, finished Requiem in D minor and delivered it to the count in 1792. In 1830, the manuscript was transferred to the Austrian National Library and, in 2001, it was insured for no less than 7.97 million dollars, making it one of the world’s most valuable manuscripts.

Of course, those who’d be interested in buying the castle want more than just a history lesson and, luckily, there’s more to Schloss Stuppach. The building dates back to 1130, was partly redesigned in the 15^th and 17^th centuries and lies close to the mountain town of Gloggnitz. The castle comes with a main building and several extras, all located in a 3.71-acre wooded park.

The main building alone spreads over four stories and counts about 50 rooms, including four bedrooms, three bathrooms, five half bathrooms, a cinema, a library and several entertainment rooms. The Requiem chapel, a dungeon and a jardinière are also located on the premises. The castle itself has already been renovated and decorated, the rest of the property might need a bit of work. There are already several business-oriented spaces arranged within the domain, as the current owners, Reinhard and Rita Zellinger, have put the castle on the map as “Mozart’s Last Castle”.

Bidding on the property opens on December 1^st and the castle will be sold to the highest bidder on the exclusive live auction in New York, on December 14^th. The property’s value is estimated between 3.95 and 9.95 million euros.

L’article 900-year-old castle where Mozart wrote “Requiem” is up for auction est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

The Austrian rail firm ÖBB already runs the largest fleet of sleeper trains in Europe and plans to double its overnight passenger count from 1.5 million to 3 million by 2030. Now it marks its centenary year with an order for 33 of the new trains, hailed as “pure luxury”, from German manufacturer Siemens, at a cost of 720 million euros. But what do they offer? 

New design, more privacy 

The new stock features an updated design, with increased privacy and more facilities. Two-person compartments are all equipped with their own own toilet and shower. Single-occupancy compartments also now exist, for individual travellers who prefer not to have to share with strangers. 

These “mini cabins” allow solo passengers to close off their own pod within a couchette car. The small but perfectly formed space includes a mirror, a foldaway breakfast table, reading lamp, storage and lockers. 

Accessible 

The seven-carriage trains will be made up of two seating cars, three couchettes and two sleeping cars, and can take up to 254 passengers. An accessible couchette, sleeping up to two wheelchair users plus two more people, with a specially-adapted toilet, will be available. 

In addition, there will be spots for bulky luggage, sports equipment, children’s pushchairs and prams, as well as six bike slots. 

Other changes include fixed beds, which the ÖBB says will be more comfortable.

Die neuen Nightjets sind da! Highlights, auf die ihr euch im Sitzwagen freuen könnt:
Mehrfach verstellbare Sitze
Gepäcksicherung mit NFC od. PIN
Lademöglichkeiten: USB, Steckdose & induktiv
Rad- & Kinderwagenplätze
Das ist die #NightjetNewGen
© ÖBB / Eisenberger pic.twitter.com/DgVyqUvSwY

— ÖBB (@unsereOEBB) October 3, 2023

Running on renewables 

Passengers will also sleep easier, thanks to the green credentials of travel by overnight train.  All ÖBB trains since 2018 “run on electricity generated exclusively by hydropower, solar and wind power… a milestone for climate protection in Austria,” ÖBB says. 

Echoing that pro-climate messaging, Austria’s Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler told AFP: “Every kilometre by train is a kilometre for climate protection and… a contribution to a better future.”  

The future of travel 

As Europe grapples with the ethics of short-haul flights and though rail networks have in fact been shrinking across Europe, Gewessler expressed no doubts about the benefits of rail over skies: “The future of short and medium haul travel belongs to the train,” she added. “Taking the train means protecting the climate. This is particularly true for night trains. That’s why we are working together to further expand the European night train network.” 

Many voyagers will never have had the opportunity to experience a night train, but a woman attending the unveiling of ÖBB’s new night trains on Saturday said: “I still remember the old sleeping coaches, which were so dark – the small window, the bunk beds and a curtain.” Looking around the new train, she said, “this is crazy – pure luxury”. 

The trains are authorised for use in Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland and are due to enter service on December 10 on the Vienna-Hamburg and Innsbruck-Hamburg routes. France will take longer to see them arrive due to the approvals needed. 

L’article New Austrian sleeper trains with individual pods are “the future” est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

Although tourism had proven an economic boost, the around 800 locals have had enough of the large, loud, disrupting groups of tourism. In their latest attempt to draw attention to the issue of overtourism, on Sunday, 27 August, residents took to the streets, blocking the tunnel and main road leading to the entrance of the town.

Access to Hallstatt was thus blocked for about 15 minutes, according to Austrian newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten. Around 100 locals gathered in the tunnel with banners and posters reading “Now an emergency brake. Or we will be run over”; “Think of our children” and “Radical frontiers for mass tourism”.

The mayor of the Hallstatt had previously promised to reduce the number of tour buses coming into the town, but the problem of overtourism persists. The residents are asking for the daily number of tourists to be capped, as well as for a curfew for tour buses, which residents ask to not be allowed into town after 5 pm.

In 2010, the average number of tourists Hallstatt was getting per day was only 100. However, being the shooting location for part of the popular Korean TV drama series “Spring Waltz” and being rumoured to be the inspiration for the fairytale kingdom of Arendelle in Disney’s “Frozen” film series, just before the pandemic, the village was getting as many as 10,000 visitors per say during peak season.

In May 2023, the town erected a wooden wall in an attempt to deter tourists from blocking the streets while stopping to take selfies. “We reacted to the complaints of the local residents”, an official of the municipality told AFP at the time. The barrier has since been removed, but it was erected in the hope that tourists would no longer flock to one of the most popular places to take selfies, generating noise pollution because of the subsequent traffic.

Mayor Alexander Scheutz explained at the time that, Hallstatt, which is inscribed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage, “is an important piece of cultural history, not a museum”, adding that they wanted to reduce the number of tour busses passing through the town, amounting to 20,000 per year, by a third, but unfortunately disclosed there was “no way of actually stopping them”.

L’article Hallstatt residents protest against overtourism est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

She announced the opportunity while attending a music festival in the town of St Pölten, on 19 and 20 August. On the premises of the festival, a tent was set up to offer a free rail pass, valid for one year, to the first three people to get the word “Klimaticket” (Climate ticket) tattooed on each day of the festival. Above the tent’s entrance a banner read “Aktion geht unter die Haut” (Action that gets under your skin).

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For both days, the offers were exhausted, with 6 people taking up the deal over the course of weekend. The MP also revealed her own tattoo at the festival, reading “Gewessler takes the lead”, according to the Telegraph, and walked among the crowds passing temporary tattoo stickers of the same Klimaticket to festival goers.

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According to Austrian newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten, another 30 people tattooed their skin in exchange for the Klimaticket during the Electric Love festival in July. The Klimaticket, a yearly rail pass costing €1,095, was introduced in Austria in 2021, in an attempt to encourage more people to chose public transport over driving across the country.

Gewessler’s offer has received accusations of taking advantage of people who cannot afford the still expensive climate ticket and would thus offer their skin as a canvas for advertising in exchange. Editor-in-chief of the Viennese weekly newspaper Falter, Florian Klenk called the campaign “cynicism and mockery of those who have no money and therefore put their skin on the market”, while MP for the liberal NEOS party, Henrike Brandstötter, said that “Offering people money for putting advertising under their skin reveals an unacceptable view of humanity from a government minister.”

Despite the backlash, Gewessler defended her offer, saying that the campaign has been “carried out with great care” and only people over the age of 18 are allowed to get the tattoos that, moreover, are only given during daylight. “The people who get the tattoos mostly already have some”, she concluded her defence of the deal.

L’article Would you get a tattoo for a free yearly rail pass? est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.

With its traditional houses plunging into the cliff side on a lake of pure water and the spire of its church pointing to the sky, Hallstatt, which received about a million visitors a year before the Covid-19 pandemic, continues to attract many social media users.

“We reacted to the complaints of the local residents,” an official of the municipality who does not wish to give his name explained to AFP. The barrier has since been removed, according to BBC, and it was erected in the hope that tourists would no longer flock to one of the most popular places to take selfies, generating noise pollution because of the traffic generated.

We want to reduce numbers by at least a third but we have no way of actually stopping them.

Alexander Scheutz, Mayor of Hallstatt

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In 2010, the number of visitors averaged 100 per day compared to the maximum of 10,000 per day that the village receives nowadays. Since the first Frozen movie was released in 2013, the Austrian village of Hallstatt has been visited by more than one million tourists. This surge in over tourism has caused a huge impact in small village of roughly 800 inhabitants.

Responding to the influx of tourists, the village’s mayor Alexander Scheutz is looking to reduce the number of buses that pass through Hallstatt, an astronomical 20,000, by a third. “Hallstatt is an important piece of cultural history, not a museum. We want to reduce numbers by at least a third, but we have no way of actually stopping them,” said Scheutz quoted by the Daily Mail.

The village has been classified by UNESCO as a world heritage site. The Hallstatt-Dachstein alpine landscape, part of the Salzkammergut, and thus of the Eastern Alps, is one of visual drama with huge mountains rising abruptly form narrow valleys. Its prosperity since mediaeval times has been based on salt mining, focused on the town of Hallstatt, a name meaning salt settlement that testifies to its primary function.

The beauty of the alpine landscape, with its higher pastures used for the summer grazing of sheep and cattle since prehistoric times as part of the process of transhumance, which still today gives the valley communities rights of access to specific grazing areas, was ‘discovered’ in the early 19th century by writers, such as Adalbert Stifler, novelist, and the dramatic poet Franz Grillparzer, and most of the leading paintings of the Biedermeier school. They were in turn followed by tourists and this led to the development of hotels and brine baths for visitors.

The landscape is exceptional as a complex of great scientific interest and immense natural power that has played a vital role in human history reflected in the impact of farmer-miners over millennia, in the way mining has transformed the interior of the mountain and through the artists and writers that conveyed its harmony and beauty

L’article Austria’s Hallstatt erects fence to deter selfie-takers est apparu en premier sur Travel Tomorrow.