Hallstatt

A lakeside Alpine village of pastel houses beneath steep mountains, a UNESCO site with a salt mine worked for 7,000 years.

The town is famous for salt. People have mined salt here since prehistoric times, and the Hallstatt salt mine is called the world's oldest working salt mine. Its wealth even gave a name to the Hallstatt culture, an Early Iron Age culture from about 800 to 450 BC.

Salt, the white gold

In the Bronze Age, salt-making here became a well-organised business with specialist workers. In 1846 Johann Georg Ramsauer found a big prehistoric cemetery near the mines. Its rich graves show how much wealth salt created.

Inside the mine, salt has kept ancient shoes, cloth, tools and miners' backpacks in good condition. Today the mine has 21 levels, from about 514 to 1,267 metres above sea level. Major activity seems to have ended around 500 BC for reasons that are unclear.

A town squeezed by mountains

Until the late 19th century you could reach Hallstatt only by boat or narrow trails. Houses by the water were linked by boat or by an upper path through attics. The first road came in 1890, partly by blasting rock.

Space for graves was so short that bones were once moved into a bone house every ten years. The local chapel shows decorated skulls painted with the name, job and date of death.

Sights and crowds

Visitors can go up to the Skywalk, a viewing platform about 360 metres above the village. Tourism grew a lot after the 1997 UNESCO listing, and in 2006 a South Korean television show made the town popular in East Asia.

Social media called it "the most Instagrammable town in the world". China even built a copy of the town in Guangdong. Because of crowds, Hallstatt has been described as an area of overtourism.

On the globe

The model shows the lakeside village under steep mountains. Look for the pastel houses and the church.