Vorarlberg

Vorarlberg is Austria’s second-smallest state by area and its westernmost, wedged between Lake Constance (Bodensee), Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany, with Tyrol its only Austrian neighbour. Bregenz, the capital, sits on the lake’s eastern shore, a working town rather than a resort, best known outside the region for the Bregenzer Festspiele, a summer opera festival performed on a floating stage on the lake.

The mountains

The state’s name means roughly “before the Arlberg,” and the Arlberg massif marks its border with Tyrol: Valluga, its highest point at 2,809 metres, straddles the two states and is reached by cable car from St. Anton. To the south, the Silvretta Alps rise to Piz Buin (3,312 m) on the Swiss border with Graubünden, Vorarlberg’s true high point. Between the two lie the Rätikon and Verwall ranges and a set of named valleys treated as destinations in their own right: the Montafon, the Brandnertal, the Klostertal leading up to the Arlberg passes, and the Grosses Walsertal, a steep V-shaped valley that has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 2000. The Bregenzerwald, north of the Arlberg, is gentler again: rolling pasture and a strong regional dairy and cheese-making tradition.

A literary footnote

Ernest Hemingway spent the winters of 1924-25 and 1925-26 in Schruns, in the Montafon, staying at the Post Hotel with his first wife and young son while he worked on what became The Sun Also Rises. He later wrote that it was “damned beautiful to see the mountains again.” The valley’s ski infrastructure has grown considerably since, but Schruns and its neighbouring villages still work as a base for both skiing and summer walking.

Getting there and around

Bregenz has a mainline station on the route between Zurich and Munich, and Feldkirch, further south, connects into Liechtenstein and eastern Switzerland. Getting east into the rest of Austria means crossing the Arlberg: road and rail tunnels both run under it, while the old pass road over the top is one of the more dramatic drives in the region when it’s open, and closed for long stretches of winter when it isn’t. Walking season runs from June into early autumn at altitude, with the Bregenzerwald’s lower pastures walkable for longer on either side of that.