About Austria
No country waltzes so effortlessly between the urban and the outdoors as Austria. One day you’re cresting alpine summits, the next you’re swanning around imperial Vienna.
Over centuries, the Habsburgs channelled immense wealth into the fine arts and music, collecting palaces and castles ... You’ll still feel their cultural reverberations in Austria today – be it watching Lipizzaner stallions prance at the Spanish Riding School, or crossing the Hofburg to eyeball Rubens masterpieces in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or Klimt and Schiele at the Museums Quartier. The work of classical pop stars such as Mozart, Strauss, Mahler, Haydn and Schubert echo as loudly as ever at lavishly gilded concert halls, and music festivals like Salzburg Festival and Bregenzer Festspiele are staged against uplifting lakeside or mountain backdrops.
Austria might conjure visions of wedding-cake-like baroque churches, dripping with lavish detail, palatial Hapsburg headquarters like Schloss Schönnbrunn, and Gothic crowning glories like the Stephansdom.
But the country is more than the sum of its pomp and palaces. A fresh breath of architectural air and a feel of new-found cool is sweeping through the cities, bringing with it a happy marriage of the contemporary and historic. Some of the most eye-catching icons are actually the newbies: Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier in revamped imperial stables, the colour-shifting giant Rubik’s Cube that is Ars Electronica in Linz and the sci-fi ready Kunsthaus Graz. Prepare to see Austria in a whole new light.
Source: Lonely Planet
