The origins
In the heart of the Alps, Austria is home to prehistoric treasures. These sites, known as palafitti, contain the remains of a surprisingly sophisticated lake dwelling. Here, on the shores of lakes, rivers and marshes, a wooden dwelling on stilts was built. Many of these treasures, dated between 5000 and 500 B.C., are now under water... and therefore still have many secrets to reveal! The Romans, for their part, have left the imprint of their monumental and very pragmatic architecture. On the site of Petronell-Carnuntum, Roman power can be seen in the imposing amphitheatres with their long and wide elliptical arenas, in the thermal baths, in the gates and portals and in the art of urban planning, as evidenced by the foundations of the houses and the canals supplying the ancient city. Further east, the remains are defensive, the legendary Danube Limes, which stretches over 600 km between Germany, Austria and Slovakia. There, the Romans built roads, legionary fortresses, small forts and temporary camps in a constant concern to integrate with the topography of the place. The centuries have passed, but the grandeur of this vast defensive enterprise still impresses. Born during Antiquity, the Christian cult continued to develop during the High Middle Ages, as shown by the astonishing site of Teurnia, where Roman baths and forums rub shoulders with an episcopal church from the5th and 6th centuries and a chapel whose5th-century paving testifies to a Byzantine influence.
Medieval treasures
Gurk Cathedral is often described as the jewel of Austrian Romanesque art. See its beautiful round arches, its delicate friezes and frescoes, and of course its amazing crypt with a hundred pillars. Millstatt Abbey also dazzles with its cloister with marble columns and stylized capitals and its sculpted portal. A sobriety pushed to the extreme in the great Cistercian abbeys. No superfluous decoration spoils the dialogue between stone and light, revealing the purity of the lines and volumes. The abbey of Heiligenkreuz and the monastery of Viktring are among the great Cistercian masterpieces of the country. This sobriety was later replaced by a Gothic effervescence in which ribbed vaults with starry silhouettes reinforced the impression of lightness and grandeur of the naves. St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna is the great masterpiece of the period with its imposing nave inspired by the typical Germanic Gothic hall churches. These churches were characterized by a three-aisle plan of equal height. TheFranciscan Church in Salzburg is an astonishing mixture of styles, with its massive pillars with stylized Romanesque capitals and its luminous choir with its airy star-shaped vault and cylindrical columns blossoming like palm trees, evidence of a truly flamboyant Gothic style. The Middle Ages were also the period of development of the cities. The latter are usually divided into two distinct parts: the upper town, where the city's fortress dominates and whose main square is lined with landmark buildings (church, town hall), and the lower town where the working classes live. In both parts of the city, the same winding, narrow streets lined with wooden and stone houses are found. Hall in Tyrol and Tauern in Radstadt have perfectly preserved this medieval urbanism. The latter also has impressive ramparts, as does Freistadt, where the parapet walk, the semicircular towers and the 13th-century gates can still be admired. The finest examples of civil Gothic architecture can be seen in Bruck an der Mur. Don't miss the Kornmess House with its beautiful stylized colonnades and its loggia with beautiful pointed vaults inspired by Venetian Gothic. Finally, what would the Middle Ages be without its castles? Austria has seen a large number of them, especially on its eastern border. Most often built on rocky outcrops, these castles dominate the surrounding area with their crenellated silhouette, of which the keep is the centrepiece. Their fortifications evolved with the progress of artillery. The Hohensalzburg fortress was thus reinforced until the end of the 15th century by towers, circular bastions, firing terraces and barbicans. In Burgenland and Carinthia, fortresses are legion, such as the fortress of Forchtenstein, solidly anchored in the foothills of the Rosaliengebirge, or that of Friesach, which has the only ditches that have not been drained and an impressive crenellated wall of 820 m punctuated with 11 towers. The place has also been transformed into a historical laboratory where you are invited to participate in the construction of a castle with the tools and materials of the time!
From the Renaissance to the Baroque
The Renaissance in Austria is rather discreet. It is the work of Italian architects who elegantly distilled harmony and a sense of proportion, particularly in the beautiful courtyards with arcades. The Landhaus in Graz is a fine example. Look at its facade with twin windows separated by fine stylized columns, and above all look at its beautiful interior courtyard with three floors of arcades and loggias...: the Italian influence is undeniable. Just like in Klagenfurt, where Italian architects created a checkerboard layout with sumptuous squares and more than 50 arcaded courtyards. Baroque, the art of staging, illusion and decorative abundance, was the style favoured by the Habsburgs to illustrate their power. Churches everywhere display their colourful silhouettes, golden domes and bulbous bell towers. If the facades remained somewhat sober, the interiors were the object of great decorative attention. Stucco, gilding, shimmering colours, twisted and complex shapes are all there. And monasteries and abbeys did not escape this baroque wave. The famous architect Jakob Prandtauer was responsible for the transformation of theBenedictine Abbey in Melk, whose church in ochre and white (typical baroque colours) and two towers topped with bulbous bells is impressive. Another beautiful transformation is that of theSaint Florian abbey, carried out by the Italian Carlo Antonio Carlone... Don't miss the giant golden organ, which is among the most beautiful in the country. During this period, the cities were also redesigned, like Salzburg, with its profusion of domes and its urban palaces with noble floors and richly decorated facades. But the Baroque period was also, and above all, the time when castles abandoned their defensive finery and gave way to palaces of pageantry, inseparable from their parks and gardens, where nature was also on display. Among the masterpieces of this palatial baroque, do not miss : eggenberg Castle with its astonishing symbolic power (4 corner towers for the 4 seasons, 365 windows, 52 of which are on the main floor, 31 rooms per floor for the days of the month..); Schönbrunn Palace, the work of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Nicola Pacassi, whose symbiosis of architecture and nature is breathtaking, and whose gazebo, with its large open arcades and triumphal arch, majestically dominates the capital; hof Palace, with its garden laid out in 7 terraces and filled with fountains and arcades; the Esterhazy Palace with its rich polychrome, stucco decorations and Tuscan columns; and of course the Vienna Belvedere.
Eclectic 19th century
In Vienna, the 19th century was accompanied by major urban upheavals. Emperor Franz Joseph decided to demolish the city walls, a move dictated as much by hygienic concerns (the population was growing steadily and the city had to expand) as by political concerns (the emperor wanted to illustrate his temperance). The old fortifications were then replaced by the Ringstrasse. 5.3 km long, the avenue became the haunt of aristocrats and bourgeois who wanted to show off their power with sumptuous urban palaces, such as the Todesco and Ephrusi palaces. Cafés and lounges abounded and all of Vienna was in a hurry. The avenue even gave its name to a style, the Ringstrasse style, a mixture of romanticism and historicism, with a monumental pomp. The most prestigious buildings are thus inspired by the canons of the past: theOpera House with its beautiful arches is neo-Renaissance, the Burgtheater neo-baroque; the Town Hall with its spires is resolutely neo-Gothic, as is the Votivkirche. And let's not forget the Parliament, designed by Theophile Hansen, with its neo-Greek silhouette, and the Museum of Applied Arts, designed by Heinrich von Ferstel, which borrows its harmonious symmetry from the Florentine Renaissance. At the same time, the aristocracy and bourgeoisie discovered the benefits of thermal cures, a discovery that was to be accompanied by an architectural boom with the creation of spa towns, such as Baden bei Wien (classified by Unesco since 2021), where architecture and town planning were part of the quest for well-being. The large treatment rooms or kursaal rub shoulders with recreational buildings (hotels and casinos...) and landscaped parks and gardens. Baden bei Wien has the largest glass-covered thermal baths in Europe. This was not the only engineering feat in the 19th century. The construction of the Semmering railway line was accompanied by the construction of almost 1,431 m of tunnels, 118 stone and 11 iron bridges and numerous viaducts and brick arches. This feat, which is due to Carl von Ghega, was also accompanied by the development of so-called leisure architecture with the creation of villas and hotels in the first purpose-built mountain resorts. This mixture of architecture and engineering is also found in the botanical gardens, where the greenhouses impress with their airy metal structures, such as the 114-metre-long palm house at Schönbrunn Palace.
Triumph of modernity
Otto Wagner began his career as an imperial advisor for architecture in Vienna under the most classical of auspices, until the Secession, which took on the mission of sweeping away the sclerosis of historicism through new formal research. The manifesto of this new movement is the pavilion designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich and called "Secession". The first exhibition hall entirely devoted to modern art, this pavilion is astonishing with its dome of golden leaves and goes down in history with the motto on its pediment: "To each century its art, to art its freedom". The pavilion was home to all the artists who wanted to create a new language by using the potential of iron, glass and steel, and by developing the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art. In the famous Wiener Werkstätte, the Viennese Workshops, architects, craftsmen and artists work together to develop every detail of a building, from the foundations to the door handles! In architecture, the leader of this Secession was Otto Wagner, who produced masterpieces such as his pavilions for the Viennese underground, with their iron framework covered with white marble slabs and topped with a roof of corrugated copper sheeting with gold ornaments and reliefs, or his superb Majolikahaus, with its facade decorated with faience and floral motifs. This decorative research will then give way to a more geometric and refined vision of this Art Nouveau, opening the way to an elegant functionalism. The two most representative buildings of this evolution are the Caisse d'Epargne Postale , with its façade clad in granite and marble slabs and rustproof aluminium decorative elements, a first for the time, and the Saint-Léopold church, built within the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, for which Wagner thought of everything, even the drip stoup to prevent infection! Adolf Loos took this functionalism even further and became famous for his total rejection of ornamentation in favour of an architecture where only the nobility of the materials and the simplicity of the layout of the volumes, most often interlocking cubes, were important. His most famous building in Vienna is the Michaelerplatz building nicknamed "the house without eyebrows" because of the windows without protruding lintels, which were then in use... It is said that Emperor Franz Joseph was so horrified by this modernity that he had the openings of the Imperial Palace facing it condemned! These two great figures of modernity also took part in the new reflections on social housing launched by the First Republic during the inter-war period and which earned the capital its nickname of "Vienna the Red"! These large, self-contained blocks of flats can be recognized by their monumental entrances leading to a large tree-lined courtyard. The Karl-Marx-Hof, designed by Karl Ehn, a pupil of Otto Wagner, is the longest residential complex in the world and can house up to 5,000 people. At the same time, other urban forms were developed, such as the Werkbund City, in which Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann (a pupil of Wagner), Clemens Holzmeister and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, one of the only female architects of the time, participated. The motto of this housing estate was "Small is beautiful" and the aim was to optimise space and costs by building individual houses in series. The small flat-roofed houses of the housing estate are today an integral part of the Viennese landscape. This social housing policy, which was undermined during the war, was revived in 1947.
Contemporary effervescence
In Vienna, Friedensreich Hundertwasser challenged the codes of architecture by imagining structures with irregular contours (like their floors!) and facades decorated with glass, metal, brick, wood and ceramics in a veritable whirlwind of colours and textures, without forgetting the vegetation which occupies a central place, testifying to the ecological concern very present in the architect. Among his most famous works, don't miss the Hundertwasser Museum. Another unclassifiable figure in Austrian architecture, Hans Hollein, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize (the Nobel Prize for architecture), made headlines with his Haas Haus, with its concrete façade clad in stone and glass. Other architectural rebels are the members of Coop Himmelb(l)au, whose work often provokes a great deal of criticism, which is precisely what the agency seeks to achieve. The name of the agency is taken from one of its first projects, the design of the roof of a law firm. This steel edge tearing through the sky and the cantilevered roof that zigzags across the façade like a bolt of lightning leave no one indifferent, just like the astonishing structure in the shape of an undulating sculpture in the heart of Hainburg, which is none other than a... church! Today, Austria has become a land of experimentation for the world's greatest architects. The projects are numerous and it is impossible to mention them all, but here are a few must-sees. In Vienna, don't miss: the former gasometers, astonishing brick cylinders, redesigned as self-sufficient districts by renowned architects such as Jean Nouvel, who added a light and airy vertical structure made of glass and steel to the original structure; the twin towers by Massimiliano Fuksas, glass colossi of 138 and 127 m ; the Leopold Museum, a white concrete monolith of classical elegance designed by Ortner & Ortner; Donau-City with its many skyscrapers, including Dominique Perrault's DC Tower, whose 220 m make it the tallest tower in the country; and the new university campus, whose library with its asymmetrical superposed volumes was designed by Zaha Hadid. Zaha Hadid has also left her mark in the Tyrol with the astonishing Bergisel Springboard, a high tower with curved lines and an integrated launch pad, and the Seegrube cable car stations, whose shapes are inspired by the surrounding landscape. Not far away, Innsbruck is also a land of architecture, with David Chipperfield's luminous and refined Kaufhaus and the City Hall, a space full of colour and light, redesigned by Jean Nouvel and Daniel Buren. In Graz, it is impossible to miss the Kunsthaus by the duo Cook & Fournier. Called "friendly alien", this building with its rounded shapes is made of deep blue acrylic glass panels and an undulating roof topped with... suction cups! Not far away, theMurinsel (Island on the Wall), a glass and steel shell island designed by Vito Acconci, is also a must-see. And these are just a few examples of this incredible contemporary creative vitality!
Vernacular riches
On the banks of the Neusiedlersee, you can discover pretty villages that manage to blend in perfectly with the landscape thanks to the use of local natural materials. On the Burgenland wine route, you will discover the Kellerstöckl, small one-room houses, made of wood or local stone, built on slopes above a deep cellar. In the Weinviertel, the winegrowers' farms are more imposing. The basic building is the streckhof, a long, narrow house, to which rows of stalls and sheds can be added, creating L- or U-shaped plans. Their roofs are usually made of wood shingles and their walls are whitewashed or stained in pastel colours. Carinthia is famous for its log buildings, which are stacked alternately in a head/root direction and notched to make them more stable. The gaps between the logs are filled with moss, woven straw or mortar. The roof of these houses can be thatched or shingled with wood. Wood is also the main material for mountain chalets, especially in the Tyrol. Built on a stone base, these chalets with sloping roofs and overhangs to protect the facades can be recognised by their rich wooden decoration: balconies and galleries with colonnades, chiselled mantling and friezes... and sometimes even a bell tower to mark the rhythm of daily life! But the region with the strongest architectural identity is Vorarlberg. Here, a tradition of wooden architecture has developed over the centuries. The region's motto is simple: "Work, work, and build yourself a little house". Small wooden chalets stand side by side with larger houses where wood is used in dialogue with other materials, but all share simplicity and purity. And nothing is left to chance. Here, everyone knows where, when and how to cut the wood to get the best out of it. A respect for the material that goes hand in hand with a deep respect for the environment. The region continues to develop new sustainable solutions, starting with energy-neutral buildings. Recent examples of this regional identity include the Werkraumhaus in Andelsbuch by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the Bregenz tourist office built on stilts, and the bus stops in Krumbach!
