Carinthia

Carinthia is Austria’s southernmost state, bordering both Italy and Slovenia, and its tourist economy runs on its lakes as much as its mountains. Klagenfurt, the capital, sits at the eastern end of the Wörthersee, 19.4 square kilometres of water and one of the warmer lakes in the Alps, swimmable through most of the summer. It is one of more than 200 lakes across the state clean enough to swim in, by the regional tourist board’s count. That lake-first identity is unusual for an Austrian state and shapes how the mountains around it get used: as a backdrop and a day out rather than the main reason to come.

Three ranges, three borders

The Hohe Tauern National Park’s first designation, in 1981, was in Carinthia, ahead of Salzburg and Tyrol. Grossglockner (3,798 m), Austria’s highest peak, sits on the state’s border with East Tyrol above Heiligenblut, the usual base for visiting it; the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, which crosses the range close by, charges a toll per vehicle and closes for winter from around late October to early May most years. To the south, the limestone Karawanken form the border with Slovenia, rising to Hochstuhl (2,236 m), and further west the Carnic Alps mark the border with Italy, reaching 2,780 m at Hohe Warte, also known by its Italian name, Monte Coglians.

The Nockberge

North of the Drau valley, the Nockberge are a range of unusually rounded, grass-covered summits, distinctly lower than Carinthia’s other ranges. They were a national park from 1987 until 2012, when the designation changed to a UNESCO biosphere reserve shared with Salzburg’s neighbouring Lungau district, a shift that put more weight on farming and settlement alongside conservation and less on strict protection.

Season and getting there

The lakes are the main summer draw, from June to early September; the mountains extend the walking season into early autumn at lower altitudes, though the high routes around Grossglockner and the Karawanken keep to the same June-to-September window as the rest of the Alps. Trains run from Klagenfurt Hauptbahnhof, with a direct line on to Villach and into Italy or Slovenia, and postbuses running up the Möll valley toward Heiligenblut.