Styria

Graz, the Styrian capital and Austria's second-largest city, has the country's largest preserved medieval and Renaissance old town — a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999, extended in 2010 to include Schloss Eggenberg on the city's western edge. The Hauptplatz, dominated by the Italianate town hall and the Renaissance Landhaus arcaded courtyard, anchors a city compact enough to walk in a morning yet dense enough in cafés, bookshops, and arcades to absorb several days. The Schlossberg, a forested rock outcrop in the centre, holds the medieval clock tower (Uhrturm) — Graz's iconic landmark, with its hour-and-minute hands reversed since the 1560s — and is reached by the Schlossbergbahn funicular, a glass lift cut into the rock, or a covered staircase. Schloss Eggenberg, three kilometres west of the centre, was built from 1625 by north-Italian architect Pietro de Pomis for Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg as a calendrical-cosmological palace: 365 windows, twenty-four state rooms (one per hour), 52 doors per floor, all centred on the Planetary Room with over five hundred ceiling paintings. The surrounding Romantic landscape garden, with peacocks and a maze, is one of Austria's finest historical parks.

Schladming and the Dachstein region together form one of Austria's most prominent winter-sports destinations and a year-round Alpine playground. The four-mountain Ski Amadé sub-region — Planai, Hauser Kaibling, Reiteralm, Hochwurzen — connects 123 kilometres of pistes and hosts annual FIS Ski World Cup men's slalom races on the Planai's floodlit Night Race course (the Schladming Nightrace, drawing the largest single-night crowd in Alpine racing). Above the resort towns, the Dachstein glacier (2,700 metres) is reached by cable car and offers a 250-metre Sky Walk built out from the cliff edge, the Stairway to Nothingness suspended over a 400-metre drop, an ice palace carved into the glacier, and on clear days a panorama from the Slovenian Karawanken to the Czech border. The Ennstal valley downstream traces the Enns river through Liezen and into Upper Austria, with the Gesäuse National Park at its heart — a karst gorge through the Ennstaler Alps with white-water rafting, technical climbing, and Austria's youngest national park (designated 2002). The historic mining town of Eisenerz with the open-pit Erzberg iron mountain — Austria's most striking single industrial landscape — and the Hauptbahn railway through the Semmering Pass connect the region to Graz and Vienna.

The Steirisches Vulkanland — Styrian Volcanic Country — occupies the south-east of the state, where extinct volcanic cones from the Tertiary period have left rich basaltic soil, thermal springs, and dramatic outcrops. The Riegersburg fortress crowns the most spectacular of these — a 482-metre basalt plug rising from the surrounding plain, with a 13th-century medieval-fortress complex of seven gates and four kilometres of defensive walls that was never taken in over four centuries of warfare. Today it houses a witches' museum (the local witch-hunt history of the 17th century is unusual for its preservation), an arms collection, and a falconry-display arena; access is by foot, an inclined elevator, or by chairlift. Below the fortress, the Vulkanland thermal-spa belt anchors Austria's domestic wellness tourism: Bad Blumau, redesigned by Friedensreich Hundertwasser in the 1990s with grass-roofed colourful pavilions and a thermal-water lake; Loipersdorf, one of the largest thermal complexes in Europe; and Bad Radkersburg on the Slovenian border with a year-round thermal pool and a baroque old town. The Vulcano dry-cured ham producer at Auersbach uses the volcanic-soil pastures to raise Mangalitza pigs, which are then aged for up to three years — the salt-cured Vulcano-Schinken is one of Austria's two protected dry-cured hams alongside Tirol's Speck.

South of Graz the landscape rolls into a ridge-and-valley wine country that draws unmistakable comparisons to Tuscany, with one important difference — the Slovenian border runs along the southern edge, and many vineyard hills face directly into the Slovenian Štajerska wine region. The Südsteirische Weinstraße (South Styrian Wine Road) traces a 79-kilometre loop from Ehrenhausen to Leutschach with constant vineyard panoramas, Buschenschank wine taverns serving the producer's own wine and a cold buffet of speck, brettljause, and pumpkinseed oil, and the timber Klapotetz wind-rattles whose creaking wooden paddles spin in the breeze to keep birds out of the grapes. The signature wines are Sauvignon Blanc (often the dominant grape, especially in the Sausal sub-region), Welschriesling, Morillon (the local name for Chardonnay), Gelber Muskateller, and Traminer, all in a precise mineral-and-fruit style with low residual sugar. North-west of Graz, the Schilcher Wine Road in West Styria specialises in Schilcher — a salmon-pink, electric-acidity rosé made exclusively from the indigenous Blauer Wildbacher grape variety, almost unknown outside Austria. The Vinofaktur Genussregal Vogau provides a curated state-wide overview with tastings of producers from all three Styrian wine sub-regions.

The Lipizzaner stud farm at Piber, in West Styria forty-five minutes from Graz, is the federal Austrian state stud — the breeding centre that has supplied the famous white stallions of the Vienna Spanish Riding School since 1920. The Lipizzaner breed dates to 1580 and the founding of the original Imperial stud at Lipica in present-day Slovenia; after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the herd moved to Piber, and today around 250 horses live and train at the stud. Visitors can tour the stables, the breeding barns, and the Alpine pastures of the Trahütten and Stubalpe where mares and foals spend the summer months — the foals are born nearly black and gradually turn white as they mature, a trait unique to the breed. The stud holds an annual Saint Hubertus's Day mass on the patronal feast of hunters, an Open Day in summer, and 'Ladies' Day' for the breeding-stallion presentations. The neighbouring Lipizzanergestüt Köflach museum documents the breed's history and the rescue operation in the closing weeks of WWII (the basis for the 1963 Disney film 'Miracle of the White Stallions').

Mariazell, in the wooded hills of north-eastern Styria, is the most important pilgrimage site in central Europe — the basilica of the Birth of the Virgin has been a Marian shrine since 1157 and a major Habsburg-era pilgrimage destination, drawing roughly a million pilgrims a year from across central Europe (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, southern Germany, and Croatia). The Mariazellerbahn narrow-gauge railway from Sankt Pölten in Lower Austria — the longest narrow-gauge electric railway in Austria, opened in 1907 — climbs through the Ötscher massif to the basilica. The Mur Cycle Path (Murradweg) traces the Mur river from its source in the Hohe Tauern in Salzburg state, through the Murau region's medieval iron-and-cooperage towns, the Bruck an der Mur and Leoben industrial corridor, central Graz, and the South Styrian wine hills before crossing into Slovenia at Bad Radkersburg — at 460 kilometres total, with 365 in Styria, it is one of Austria's classic long-distance cycle routes. The Murau-Murtalbahn narrow-gauge steam railway in the upper Mur valley operates summer weekend services with traditional locomotives.

Steirisches Kürbiskernöl (Styrian pumpkinseed oil) — the unmistakable dark-green, almost-black oil pressed from the seeds of the Steirischer Ölkürbis pumpkin variety — is the single most distinctive Styrian product, EU-protected as a Geographical Indication since 1996 and produced exclusively in Styria, Burgenland, and Lower Austria from a defined cultivar. Authentic bottles carry a holographic seal and the Steirisches-Kürbiskernöl-g.g.A. logo; counterfeits are widespread internationally. The oil is poured cold over salads, soups, vanilla ice cream, and the regional Backhendlsalat (fried-chicken salad) rather than used for cooking. Other Styrian protected products include Vulcano dry-cured ham, the Pöllauer Hirschbirne pear (used in schnapps and the Hirschbirnenbrand brandy), the Sulmtaler indigenous chicken breed, and Steirisches Almenland pasture-raised beef from the Almenland uplands east of Graz. Backhendlsalat, Sulmtaler-Rind beef tartare with pumpkinseed oil, Buschenschank brettljause, Sterz polenta, and the Bauernkrapfen yeast-pastry are the staples of regional cuisine, and the long-form Buschenschank wine-tavern meal — three or four glasses of vintage white over an afternoon, with a slow-paced cold buffet — is the region's signature dining experience.

Graz is connected to Vienna by Railjet (two hours forty minutes via the Semmering pass and the new Koralm Tunnel section once fully opened) and the A2 South Motorway. Graz Airport (Flughafen Graz, GRZ) at Feldkirchen, ten kilometres south of the city, has direct flights to Vienna, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Istanbul, and seasonal Mediterranean leisure routes. The Schladming and Ennstal regions are also reachable from Salzburg Airport (SZG) — 80 minutes by car or train via the Tauernautobahn — which is often the most practical international gateway for the ski regions. The Inntal-Brenner-Pyhrn-Schober rail axis and the Murtalbahn narrow-gauge railway connect smaller towns. For visa applicants travelling within Austria, Graz Hauptbahnhof connects to Vienna Hauptbahnhof, Linz, Klagenfurt (via the recently completed Koralm Tunnel reducing the journey to under one hour), and Maribor in Slovenia (forty-five minutes by Railjet). The Styrian Tourism Card (S-Pass) and the regional Holiday Card (Steiermark Card) cover regional public transport and many attractions — separate from the Vienna network but valid across the entire state.