A guide to Bad Ischl, the Alps' first European Capital of Culture

Every summer day at 6am, 19th-century empress Sisi left her holiday hunting lodge in the Austrian resort of Bad Ischl to hike up Jainzen, the forested mountain looming just behind. The average ascent is around an hour, but they say it took the tall, tattooed wife of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I just 40 minutes to reach the peak.

With the spare time, she might ride one of her 50 horses, exercise on wooden machines she designed for her home gym, scoff violet pastries or smoke in her lavish gardens. Over a century since Sisi’s death, this town east of Salzburg remains a summer playground among wellness enthusiasts and anyone with two poles to hike with.

It’s a gateway to the Alpine lakes and mountains of Salzkammergut, a region whose name translates to ‘salt domain’, a nod to a local salt-mining tradition that dates back 7,000 years. It’s partly thanks to this history and pastoral charm that the entire region was anointed one of three 2024 European Capitals of Culture, with Bad Ischl the banner town — the first rural, Alpine destination to wear the mantle.

In the centre, Zauner Café serves glossy iced gateaux, steps from the villa where 19th-century composer Anton Bruckner penned his symphonies. A 15th-century church steeple still presides over the cobbled square, lined with lederhosen shops. However, this year, a defunct brewery is coming back to life as a gallery for Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto, who creates mosaics in salt, and contemporary weavers are reinvigorating a textile mill in Ebensee, 20 minutes away by car, spinning old tales into new art. Some of the 150 or so projects in the calendar are likely to become permanent, like the takeover of the former restaurant at Bad Ischl station by star chef Christoph Krauli Held.

The other forgotten attraction to be revived for the festivities is the vintage cog Schafberg Railway. At just over 3.5 miles in length, the line from Saint Wolfgang, another village in the region, heads around 4,000ft up Schafberg mountain. From its peak, the landscape unfurls to the hazy horizon: Bad Ischl to the east, the white-capped Alps to the south and, all around, the region’s 76 glacial lakes, pure and sapphire-blue.

Austrians head to these lakes to experience clean living — and white-tablecloth dining from another era. In St Wolfgang, where some women still wear dirndls when grocery shopping, the top table is lakeside at Landhaus zu Appesbach: opt for the venison, served with brioche dumplings and Burgundermacher pinot. Walk the meal off around the village, where a 12th-century church attracts Catholics. A different sort of pilgrim will head for the shore to swim by moonlight, perhaps rewarding themselves with small-batch gin from a 24-hour vending machine next to See-Distillerie.

Visitors are often surprised by modern anachronisms like the gin machine. Another one can be found on tiny Fuschlsee, the next lake over, where the rambling 600-year-old Schloss Fuschl castle has been nipped and tucked into a suave Rosewood hotel, opening in May.

Locals cram into the next-door fishery for plates of wood-smoked char supplied by the lake’s sole licensed fisherman; those in the know hit the shop before the 6pm closing to stock up for a sunset picnic. Others hop on wooden water taxis for the slow, silent drift to Fuschl town and scramble up mountains such as Ellmaustein or steeper Schober to watch the view reinvent itself in golds and pinks.

A 20-minute drive away is the new Kulmspitz observation tower high above Mondsee. A drive around this lake distills the region to its essential ingredients: gingerbread cottages, pilgrimage chapels, misty waterfalls and, at Schwarzindien, a warm swimming cove to bathe in. If that’s not sufficiently cultural, Bad Ischl is always less than an hour’s drive away — though Sisi would have walked it, of course.