Lakes and mountains in the middle of Austria.
One of the reasons, the Salzkammergut is something extraordinary is that it has some of the most beautiful parts of Salzburg, Styria and Upper Austria. The area between St. Gilgen and Mondsee got rich from salt and ennobled by Emperor Franz Joseph who spent almost every summer there. The discovery of the healing powers of the Sole led to a tourist boom. The Salzburger Land with the capital city of Salzburg, which has been a cultivated landscape for thousands of years, consists of the counties of Pinzgau, Pongau, Lungau, Tennengau and Flachgau. The altitude difference between the picturesque landscape of the Trumer Lakes, the Fuschl Lake and the mountain ridge of the Upper Tauern is about 10,000 feet. There are pretty little towns like Hallein or Zell am See, villages that kept their character, terrific valleys and many cultural treasures which withstand the hype. The landscape of Upper Austria, despite its mountains – the glaciated Dachsteinplateau is in this area – offers other facets like the lakes of the Salzkammergut, vast basin landscapes in the alpine foothills and a part of the Rumpfschollen mountains north of the Danube, the geologically oldest part of Austria. Upper Austria is divided into quarters, three of which are named after rivers and one after foothills: the Mühlvierel to the North, the Hausruckviertel to the West and the Traunviertel, which stretches from South to East.
