Austria

The Eastern Alps fill most of Austria, from the Arlberg and the glaciers of the Ötztal to the Grossglockner, the highest summit. North of the mountains the Danube passes the vineyards and apricot orchards of the Wachau on its way to the Vienna Basin. Lakes fill the valleys of the Salzkammergut, and in the far east the land flattens around Lake Neusiedl, a shallow steppe lake fringed with reeds.

Salt mined at Hallstatt gave its name to an Iron Age culture, and Rome guarded the Danube from forts such as Carnuntum. A document of 996 first names Ostarrîchi, the ‘eastern realm’. From 1278 the Habsburgs ruled from Vienna for over six centuries, gathering an empire through marriage as much as war. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led to the war that broke up Austria-Hungary. Nazi Germany annexed the country in 1938, and the State Treaty of 1955 restored independence, with permanent neutrality declared that year.

Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and the Strauss family wrote music played in every concert hall, and Freud, Klimt and Mahler worked in Vienna around 1900. The coffee house, with marble tables and newspapers on wooden holders, is an institution. Skiers race down the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel each January. Alpine tourism fills the valleys in both seasons, oxygen steelmaking was first used industrially at Linz in 1952, Swarovski cuts crystal in Tyrol, and Red Bull was founded near Salzburg.