Hallstatt Scavenger Hunt and Self-Guided Tour

The route: from the edge of the old village past the Marktplatz and Maria am Berg to the postcard view

10 stops · about 21 min walking · start: Monument (Denkmal) · finish: Hallstatt Viewpoint

The hunt starts at a monument on the edge of the old village and passes the war memorial and the Ramsauer memorial on the way to the World Heritage Museum and the Marktplatz. You then explore the lanes of the village, visit the Protestant church by the lake and climb the covered stairs to Maria am Berg and its Charnel House. It finishes at the famous viewpoint at the northern end of the village. Each answer is read off a façade, a memorial or the churchyard terrace in the open air, so the riddles never send you through a paying door, and if you reach the centre first, the app can begin at the Marktplatz instead and fit the remaining stops around it.

Open the route map ↗

1. 

   1Monument (Denkmal)Start

   This monument stands on the edge of the old village, which is squeezed onto a narrow strip of land between Lake Hallstatt and steep mountain slopes. Salt has been mined in the mountain above for thousands of years, and the area has been part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.

2. 

   2War Memorial

   This memorial honours the people of Hallstatt who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. Like similar memorials in many Austrian villages, it is a reminder of how deeply both wars reached even into a small community far from the front lines.

3. 

   3Johann Georg Ramsauer Memorial

   Johann Georg Ramsauer was the mine manager who in 1846 discovered a prehistoric burial ground on the Salzberg above Hallstatt. Over the following years he excavated close to a thousand graves with weapons, jewellery and bronze vessels. The finds were so important that an early Iron Age culture of Europe is named after Hallstatt.

4. 

   4Hallstatt World Heritage Museum

   The museum on the lakeside street tells the long history of Hallstatt, from prehistoric salt miners and the finds of the Hallstatt culture to village life in later centuries. It explains how salt made this remote place wealthy long before it became a destination for travellers.

5. 

   5Marktplatz

   The small market square is the centre of the village, lined with tall, colourful houses with wooden balconies and window boxes. In the middle stands a Holy Trinity column, a type of baroque monument found on many Austrian squares. With so little flat land between mountain and lake, it is one of the few open spaces in Hallstatt.

6. 

   6Village lanes

   From here narrow lanes and stairways climb between houses built one above the other on the steep slope. Because flat land is so scarce, many Hallstatt houses have entrances on different levels, and some can only be reached on foot. Stacked firewood and tiny terraced gardens are part of the village scene.

7. 

   7Protestant Parish Church

   The neo-Gothic Protestant church with its slender pointed spire stands right on the lakeshore beside the market square and was completed in the 1860s. Many salt miners of the region secretly kept their Protestant faith during the Counter-Reformation, and only the Patent of Toleration of 1781 allowed them to worship openly. Its spire is part of the classic Hallstatt view.

8. 

   8Church of the Assumption (Maria am Berg)

   The Catholic parish church stands on a terrace above the rooftops and is reached by a covered stairway. The late Gothic building has carved winged altars from the early 16th century, and from its steep churchyard you look straight down onto the lake.

9. 

   9Hallstatt Charnel House

   In the small St Michael's Chapel next to the Catholic church lies the Beinhaus, which holds more than 1,200 skulls. Because the churchyard had so little space, bones were exhumed after some years and kept here, and around 600 skulls were painted with names, dates and garlands of flowers or ivy. The custom goes back to the 18th century.

10. 

    10Hallstatt ViewpointFinish

    From this spot at the northern end of the village you get the view known from countless postcards: houses rising from the water, the spire of the Protestant church and the mountains behind. The scene is so famous that a full-size copy of Hallstatt was built in China in 2012.