St Polten
The Provincial capital is home to a Cathedral, the bishop’s residence, a
Franciscan church, a church of the Carmelite Nuns with museum and several
Baroque patrician houses.
Excursions
The spa of Baden bei Wien has a casino, a sulphur bath cure, a summer
theatre and a harness-racing (trotting) course, the spa has long been
popular with the Austrian aristocracy.
Krems an der Donau has been a wine-growing town since the middle ages and
the Piaristenkirche and the Winestadt Museum both feature important works of
the 18th-century artist Johann Martin Schmidt. To the north of Landstrasse
much of the original town layout remains, with numerous renaissance houses
and small squares.
Melk an der Donau is famous for its enormous Benedictine Abbey on the bluff
above the town (although it was less well known as a pilot for the next
phase of Nazi concentration camps). Semmering is both a spa and an
attractive ski resort.
Bad Deutsch-Altenburg boasts a museum and the Roman archaeological park
Carnuntum. In Dürnstein, the castle ruins where Richard the Lionheart was
imprisoned, the medieval town centre and the monastery church with its
Baroque excess of statues of saints are part of every tour. The sights of
Retz include subterranean wine-cellars, well-restored medieval city walls,
windmills and a Dominican church, and Rohrau is noted as Joseph Haydn’s
birthplace. The Austrian Military Academy (an old castle), the Cathedral, a
Capuchin church and a former Jesuit church (now the city’s museum) can be
visited in Wiener Neustadt. The abbey, library, state rooms and chapter
house at Zwettl are of some interest. Burg Rosenau hosts a Museum of
Freemasonry. The Thayatal National Park, on the Thaya River on the border
with the Czech Republic is a transborder protected area of what is left of
the European forest. The Donau-Auen National Park to the east of Vienna is
the last protected area of European rainforest. |
