Things to do
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Dachstein Krippenstein-Seilbahn
Three stages from the valley floor at Obertraun to the plateau, opened in 1951 and rebuilt since, with the ice cave and the mammoth cave leaving from the middle station. Tickets are sold by section or as a day pass. Ten minutes from Hallstatt by bus along the lake shore, or twenty on the water.
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Dachstein-Rieseneishöhle
Ice caves inside the Dachstein at about thirteen hundred metres, where meltwater refreezes into sheets and towers that grow and shrink from year to year. A cable car climbs from Obertraun and a steep walk leads to the entrance. Guided only, open May to October, and cold enough that a coat matters in August.
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Gosauseen
Two lakes in a side valley west of the village, the lower one ringed by a level path of about an hour with the Dachstein glacier standing at the head of it. This is the view painted and photographed more than any other in the Salzkammergut. A chairlift climbs the northern side for a higher line on the same wall.
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Hallstatt Prehistoric Cemetery
The prehistoric cemetery in the valley above the village, where about fifteen hundred graves were excavated from 1846 and gave their name to the Hallstatt culture of the early Iron Age across central Europe. Grave goods came from the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Finds are shown in the village museum and the site is reached from the mine path.
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Hallstätter See
Eight and a half kilometres of dark green water held between limestone walls, deep enough that the far shore road runs in tunnels. Boats cross from the village to the railway station on the opposite bank, which is how most arrive. Rowing boats and electric launches are rented on the quay, and swimming is bracing in any month.
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Katholische Pfarrkirche
A late Gothic church on a terrace above the roofs, with a carved winged altar of about 1515 inside. Its graveyard has no room to expand, so bones were exhumed after a decade and stacked in the charnel house below, where about twelve hundred skulls are painted with names, dates and flowers. The last was added in 1995.
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Krippenstein
A limestone plateau at just over two thousand metres above Obertraun, reached by the second and third stages of the same cable car. A steel walkway called the Five Fingers reaches out over a cliff, one of them with a glass floor. Karst pavement and stunted pine cover the top, and the weather turns fast.
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Salzwelten Hallstatt
The mine above the village, entered by funicular and then a tunnel, with two long wooden slides between levels and a subterranean lake. Archaeologists working here found a Bronze Age wooden staircase preserved in the salt, the oldest in Europe. Overalls are issued and the temperature underground sits at eight degrees all year.
