Upper Austria

Upper Austria lies either side of the Danube, with Linz, the state capital, on the river. Most of the Salzkammergut, which it shares with Salzburg and Styria, lies within the state, in the districts of Gmunden and Vöcklabruck.

South of the Danube: limestone Alps

South of Linz, the land rises into the Northern Limestone Alps, protected in part as Kalkalpen National Park, Austria’s second-largest at 208 square kilometres after the Hohe Tauern. Established in 1997 south of the ironworking town of Steyr, it is largely forest, its ancient beech forests part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its highest point, Hoher Nock, reaches 1,963 metres. Steyr stands where the Steyr meets the Enns, below Lamberg Castle and St Michael’s Church. The Totes Gebirge, shared with Styria, rises to 2,515 metres on the Grosser Priel, a figure from the Austrian survey office’s map; the Sengsengebirge, inside the national park, tops out at Hoher Nock.

North of the Danube: the Mühlviertel

North of the river, the Mühlviertel is older, gentler country: the granite and gneiss upland of the Bohemian Massif, bordering the Czech Republic to the north. Its highest point, Plöckenstein (1,379 m), stands on the Austrian-Czech border about 1.3 kilometres east of the tripoint where Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany meet, and is known from Adalbert Stifter’s tale Der Hochwald; Stifter was born at Oberplan (Horní Planá) in Bohemia. The Bohemian Forest, which lies north of the Danube and covers a tenth of Austria’s area, is a low range of bare, windswept plateaus with a harsh climate.

Season and getting there

Linz Hauptbahnhof is where the Pyhrn Railway starts, running 104.2km south to Selzthal by way of Kirchdorf an der Krems, and the Summerauer Railway also serves the station. The national park says trains reach Windischgarsten from Vienna, Linz and Graz and the Enns valley at Großraming and Reichraming from Vienna and from Linz and St. Valentin via Steyr, and that buses run to Molln from Steyr and from Kirchdorf an der Krems.