The Salzkammergut, from Salzburg to Hallstatt

The lakes road

Heading east out of Salzburg, the B158 runs from one lake to the next. After the Fuschlsee, narrow and dark green, the turquoise Wolfgangsee comes into view all at once on the way down to Sankt Gilgen, with the Schafberg opposite. A boat crosses to Sankt Wolfgang, where a rack railway, running since 1893, climbs almost to the summit.

Further south, the Gosau valley ends on the shore of the Vorderer Gosausee. Early in the morning, with no wind, the Dachstein glacier is reflected in the water; the walk round the lake takes an hour. At Hallstatt, the road goes through a tunnel above the village: you park at the entrance and carry on on foot. Near the church, the ossuary in St Michael’s Chapel holds more than 1,200 skulls, about 600 of them painted. In the evening, once the coaches have left, the lanes empty.

Across the lake, at Obertraun, a cable car climbs to the Krippenstein, where the Five Fingers platform juts out over a drop of more than 400 metres. On the way back, you drive along the Traunsee, then the Attersee and the Mondsee.

At Hallstatt, salt has been mined since prehistory. After a year of work, the mine reopened on 29 August 2026 with a new funicular. The tour goes down the miners’ slides and passes a Bronze Age wooden staircase, presented as the oldest in Europe. As early as 1607, a pipeline made of hollowed-out tree trunks carried brine all the way to Ebensee.

From 1846, the mine’s director, Johann Georg Ramsauer, excavated nearly a thousand graves in an Iron Age burial ground. Since then, archaeologists have spoken of the Hallstatt culture. So a village of about 750 people gave its name to a period of European prehistory.

The Habsburgs on holiday

In 1853, the young Franz Joseph became engaged in Bad Ischl to Elisabeth, known as Sisi. For their wedding, his mother gave them a villa there, the Kaiservilla, where the emperor spent his summers for decades. It was there that he signed the declaration of war on Serbia, on 28 July 1914. In 2024, Bad Ischl and the Salzkammergut were European Capital of Culture.

After the emperor came the holidaymakers, then the cinema. In Sankt Wolfgang, the Im Weißen Rössl inn gave its name to an operetta in 1930, known in English as White Horse Inn. The Sound of Music (1965) was partly filmed in the region: the wedding in the church at Mondsee, the end of “Do-Re-Mi” in the Mirabell Gardens, in Salzburg.

What not to miss

1. 1Salzburg’s old townMozart’s birthplace, the cathedral and the fortress, on foot.
2. 2The Vorderer GosauseeThe Dachstein reflected in the lake early in the morning, then the hour-long walk round the lake.
3. 3The Hallstatt salt mineThe funicular, the view over the lake, then the miners’ slides.
4. 4The KrippensteinThe ice caves halfway up, then the Five Fingers platform.
5. 5Seeschloss OrtA white castle on an islet in the Traunsee, linked to the shore by a footbridge.
6. 6Hellbrunn PalaceSeventeenth-century trick fountains, designed to soak the guests.

The Salzkammergut in pictures

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The Hallstätter See and Obertraun from the Krippenstein.

The Salzkammergut table

The lakes provide the fish: char and whitefish. They are eaten smoked, or grilled on a stick over the embers: this is Steckerlfisch. In the mountains, people eat Kasnocken, small cheese dumplings. In Bad Ischl, stop at the Zauner pâtisserie.

Salzburg has its Salzburger Nockerl, a soufflé in three peaks said to stand for the city’s hills. Its Mozartkugeln were created in 1890 by the confectioner Paul Fürst. The Augustiner brewery in Mülln, founded by monks in 1621, serves its beer in stoneware mugs in a large garden.