So you have done Vienna. Maybe Salzburg too, and you have the obligatory Hallstatt photo that everyone has. Lovely. But Austria has a habit of tucking its best bits down side roads and up funiculars, in towns most people cannot pronounce and would never think to stop in. That is the Austria I keep going back for.
Austria keeps calling me back and every single trip throws up somewhere new I want to tell people about. A blue blobby art gallery locals nicknamed the alien. A cave so big and so cold it feels like another planet. A meadow in Styria that floods every spring and turns emerald. This guide is my pick of those quieter corners, with rough costs, how to reach them, and when to go so you are not queuing behind three coach parties for the same view.
None of these are secret in the “you’ll have the place to yourself” sense. Austria is far too well organised for that. But they are the spots the guidebooks skim past, and the ones I actually send friends to. If you want the polished big-hitters as well, our full Austria travel guide covers those. This is the offbeat half of the map.
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Austria's Hidden Gems: Quick Facts
Most underrated city: Graz. Red-roofed old town, world's largest historic armoury, and food that punches well above its size.
Weirdest thing you'll do: walk inside the Eisriesenwelt near Werfen, the biggest ice cave on the planet. Bring a coat, even in July.
Best drive: the Grossglockner High Alpine Road. Around £34 / €40 / $44 per car in tolls, and worth every cent.
Best time to go: shoulder season. Late spring and early autumn get you thin crowds, open passes, and gentler prices.
How to reach them: trains for the cities, a hire car for the lakes, passes and gorges. A few of the best spots are a nightmare without your own wheels.
Tinker's Tip: Don't try to string all of these into one trip. Pick a corner. The east (Graz, southern Styria, the Wachau) makes one lovely loop. The west and south (Vorarlberg, Carinthia, the high passes) makes another. Trying to do both means you'll spend your holiday behind the wheel.
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| Hidden gem | Region | Best for | Getting there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Graz | Styria | City breaks, food, museums | Direct trains from Vienna |
| Eisriesenwelt | Salzburg | Once-in-a-lifetime caving | Car or day tour from Salzburg |
| Wachau Valley | Lower Austria | Wine, abbeys, cycling | Train to Melk or Krems, then boat |
| Bad Gastein | Salzburg | Spas, faded grandeur, skiing | Direct train, no car needed |
| Grossglockner Road | Salzburg / Carinthia | Epic alpine driving | Car only, open in summer |
| Wörthersee | Carinthia | Warm-lake swimming | Train to Klagenfurt |
Related Article: First time in the country and want the big names first? Have a read of our top 10 places to visit in Austria before you start plotting the detours.
Graz, Austria's most underrated city
If Vienna is the grand imperial one and Salzburg is the pretty musical one, Graz is the clever, cheaper, slightly hipper younger sibling. It is Austria’s second city, down in Styria near the Slovenian border, and it flies under the radar in a way I find hard to explain. The old town is a UNESCO-listed jumble of red roofs and arcaded courtyards, there are more students than tourists, and you can eat brilliantly for a fraction of Vienna prices.
The hill in the middle is the Schlossberg. You can walk up, take the glass lift bored into the rock, or ride the little Schlossbergbahn funicular for a couple of euros each way (roughly £3 / €4 / $4). At the top there is the Uhrturm, the clock tower that has somehow become the city’s logo, and a view over all those roofs. Down below, the Landeszeughaus is the reason a lot of history buffs come at all. It is the largest surviving historic armoury in the world, floor after floor of it, more than 32,000 pieces of armour and weaponry left exactly where they were racked centuries ago. It is genuinely eerie, in a good way.
Then there is the Kunsthaus, a bulbous blue art museum that lights up at night and that locals fondly call the Friendly Alien. Next to it, the Murinsel, a little floating shell of a cafe moored in the middle of the River Mur. Neither is subtle. Both are great. Graz is also an easy jumping-off point for the wine country to the south, which we will get to.
Must do: Give the armoury a full hour, not a quick lap. The sheer repetition of it, rack after rack after rack, is the whole point. It only really lands when you stop counting.
Eisriesenwelt: inside the world of the ice giants
This hidden gem stayed with me. Mindblowing! Eisriesenwelt means “world of the ice giants” in German, and the name is not doing any heavy lifting. It is the largest ice cave open to the public anywhere on Earth, carved into the Tennengebirge mountains above the village of Werfen, about 40 minutes south of Salzburg. The cave stretches more than 40 kilometres into the rock. You only walk about a kilometre of it, and that is still plenty to leave you a bit stunned.
Getting up there is half the adventure. From the car park you climb to a cable car, ride up, then walk a bit more to the entrance, all of it above a valley that drops away dramatically. Inside, it hovers at around freezing all year, and the guides hand out carbide lamps and lead you through frozen waterfalls and ice walls the size of buildings. No photos allowed inside, which annoys some people, but honestly it forces you to just look. The full experience with cable car and guided tour comes to around £34 / €40 / $43.
Public transport to the cave is fiddly, so a lot of people pair it with the drive or take an organised trip. If you are based in Salzburg without a car, a guided Eisriesenwelt day tour from Salzburg takes the faff out of the transport and usually throws in the nearby Hohenwerfen Castle, a proper clifftop fortress with a falconry show. Castle entry on its own runs about £13 / €15 / $16.
Watch out: The cave shuts for the colder half of the year and only opens roughly late spring to autumn, so a winter trip is out. And it is cold in there whatever the weather is doing outside. I have watched people in shorts turn back after ten minutes. Warm layers and proper shoes, no excuses.
Riegersburg Castle and the southern Styria wine roads
South of Graz the land softens into rolling green hills, vineyards, and long lazy roads that people love to compare to Tuscany. It even has the nickname, Steirische Toskana. I would not oversell it, but I get why they say it. This is Buschenschank country, where family wine taverns open their doors seasonally and serve their own wine with cold cuts, cheese, pumpkin seed oil on everything, and not much fuss.
Crowning one of the volcanic plugs sticking out of all that green is Riegersburg, a medieval fortress that has never been taken. You can hike up or take a lift, and the views from the walls run for miles. Down the road there is Zotter, a slightly bonkers chocolate factory you can tour and taste your way around. Between the castle, the wine, and the dark green pumpkin seed oil that Styrians put on ice cream (try it, trust me), this is a corner made for slow, greedy days.
Good to know: Buschenschank taverns keep their own hours and often open only in certain weeks of the year. Check which ones are “aufg’sperrt” (open) before you drive out, or you’ll rock up to a lovely locked gate. A car is basically essential down here.
Bad Gastein, the spa town with a waterfall down the middle
Bad Gastein is one of the oddest, most photogenic places in the country. Picture a valley town of tall Belle Epoque hotels stacked up a steep gorge, with a full-blown waterfall crashing straight through the centre of it. For years a lot of those grand old buildings sat empty and peeling, which gave the whole place a haunting, faded feel. Some of them have since been done up, and there is a fashionable, arty crowd moving in. The result is this strange mix of grandeur, decay, and hip little bars, and I love it for exactly that.
People originally came for the thermal water, and you still can. The Felsentherme baths are built into the rock, and there is a whole tradition of soaking here. In winter it doubles as a ski town, with lifts running straight from the valley. In summer the hiking is superb and quiet. It is also dead easy to reach without a car, since the main railway line stops right in town.
Reality check: Bad Gastein is only half restored. Some corners still look a bit rough round the edges, and that puts a few people off. For me the faded bits are the charm, not the flaw. Go knowing it is not a polished postcard and you’ll get on with it.
Where to Stay in Austria
The Salzkammergut, beyond Hallstatt
Everyone goes to Hallstatt. And fair enough, it is ridiculously pretty, and we have a whole Hallstatt guide if that is your plan. But the lake district it sits in, the Salzkammergut, is stuffed with lakes and villages that get a tiny fraction of the footfall. You can quite happily spend a week here and barely repeat yourself.
A few that I keep coming back to:
- Gosausee. A mirror-flat lake with the Dachstein glacier reflected in it. Flat, easy walk around the shore. On a still morning it is unreal.
- Wolfgangsee. Swim off the shore at St Wolfgang, then ride the old cog railway up the Schafberg for a view over half the lake district.
- Grüner See (Green Lake). Technically over in Styria, but worth the mention. A meadow with park benches and trees that floods every spring as the snow melts and briefly becomes an emerald lake. You cannot dive it any more, but the walk is gorgeous.
If you want to earn your views, the region is laced with proper trails too. The lakes double as swimming spots in high summer, which is a lovely reward after a hot walk.
Timing tip: Green Lake is only really a lake for a few weeks in late spring, when the snowmelt is at its peak. By high summer it shrinks back to a shallow pond and a meadow. Get the timing wrong and you’ll wonder what the fuss was about.
Related Article: Fancy walking some of this instead of just driving past it? Our roundup of Austria’s best hikes covers the routes that are actually worth the boot leather.
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Browse the shopThe Wachau Valley: apricots, abbeys and river bends
An hour or so west of Vienna, the Danube squeezes into a valley of terraced vineyards and pretty river towns. This is the Wachau, and it is one of the loveliest stretches of the whole river. It runs roughly between the towns of Melk and Krems, and you can do it by boat, by bike, or by a slow drive with lots of stops for wine you’ll want to bring home.
At the Melk end there is the abbey, an enormous yellow baroque monastery on a rock with a library that will make you gasp. At the other end sits Dürnstein, a little town with a blue-and-white abbey tower and a ruined castle on the hill above it. The wine here, mostly crisp Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, is some of Austria’s best. And in early summer the whole valley smells of apricot blossom, which the locals turn into jam, schnapps, and just about everything else.
Fact: The castle ruin above Dürnstein is where Richard the Lionheart was held prisoner on his way home from the Crusades. There is a legend about a minstrel finding him by singing outside every castle until Richard sang back. Probably nonsense, but a good story to tell at the top.
Krimml Waterfalls and the Grossglockner High Alpine Road
Two big-ticket alpine sights that sit close together in the Hohe Tauern National Park, and both deserve a spot on any road trip through the high country. The Krimml Waterfalls are the tallest in Austria, tumbling down in three great tiers. A well-made trail zigzags up alongside them, with viewpoints at each level and a fair bit of spray, so expect to get a little damp. Entry is cheap, around £7 / €8 / $9 for an adult, and the full climb takes a couple of hours if you go all the way to the top.
Then there is the drive I bang on about to anyone who will listen. The Grossglockner High Alpine Road is 48 kilometres of hairpins climbing to around 2,500 metres, past glaciers, marmots, and viewpoints that make you keep pulling over. At the top you reach Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe, looking straight at Austria’s highest peak and the Pasterze glacier below it. It is a toll road, and it only opens for the warmer months, but as paid experiences go it is one of the best value in the Alps. You really do need a car for this one.
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| Experience | GBP | EUR | USD | Good to know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eisriesenwelt ice cave (cable car + tour) | £34 | €40 | $43 | Open warmer months only |
| Grossglockner Road (car day toll) | £34 | €40 | $44 | Varies by season, cheaper late in the day |
| Krimml Waterfalls (adult entry) | £7 | €8 | $9 | Trail takes 2 to 3 hours up and back |
| Hohenwerfen Castle (entry) | £13 | €15 | $16 | Falconry shows in season |
| Schlossberg funicular, Graz (one way) | £3 | €4 | $4 | Or walk up for free |
Prices are a guide and vary by season, route and demand. Buying tickets online ahead of time usually saves you a little and skips the queue.
Weather note: Up on the Grossglockner the weather can flip from sunshine to fog in minutes, and the road closes in bad conditions. Check it is open before you commit to the drive, fill the tank first (fuel stops are scarce), and pack a warm layer even in August.
Bregenz and Lake Constance, out west
Right over in the far west of the country, in the little state of Vorarlberg, Austria bumps up against Germany and Switzerland on the shore of Lake Constance, which the locals call the Bodensee. Bregenz is the main town, and its party piece is the Seebühne, a vast stage built out over the water where a huge opera is staged each summer. Even out of season the giant set pieces sitting on the lake are a sight in themselves.
Take the Pfänder cable car up the hill behind town and on a clear day you can see across three countries and a scatter of Alps. Vorarlberg as a whole is quietly one of my favourite bits of Austria: understated, seriously into good modern architecture, and home to the Bregenzerwald, a valley of dairy villages with a cheese trail you can actually eat your way along. It feels a world apart from the Vienna tourist trail, mostly because it is.
Good to know: The floating opera only runs in summer, and tickets go fast. If that is your reason to come, sort the ticket before the accommodation. If it is not, you can still wander the harbour and gawp at the stage set for nothing.
Klagenfurt, Wörthersee and a world in miniature
Down in the south, Carinthia gets the warmest, sunniest weather in the country, and the locals make full use of it. The star is the Wörthersee, a long turquoise lake that actually warms up enough to swim in comfortably through summer, which is not something you can say about every alpine lake. There are lidos and swimming spots dotted all along it, and the little church at Maria Wörth juts out into the water like it was placed there for photos.
Klagenfurt itself is a relaxed old town with a dragon statue, the Lindwurm, as its mascot. Just outside sits Minimundus, a park of famous world landmarks shrunk down to model size, which is far more fun than it has any right to be, especially with kids. And for the best view of the whole lake, climb (or lift) up the Pyramidenkogel, a swooping wooden tower with a very long slide built into it for the trip back down. Yes, I went down the slide. No regrets.
Quick win: Base yourself in Klagenfurt for a couple of nights and you can mix cheap lake swims, the miniature park, and the tower slide with almost no driving. It is one of the easier hidden-gem corners to do without a car.
Getting around Austria's quiet corners
Here is the honest split. Austria’s trains, run by ÖBB, are excellent, and for the cities and the main valley towns (Graz, Klagenfurt, Bad Gastein, Melk, Bregenz) you barely need anything else. Turn up, buy a ticket, go. But the moment you want the remote lakes, the wine roads, the high passes, or a quiet trailhead, public transport gets slow and awkward, and a car changes everything.
My usual approach is a mix. Trains between the cities, then a hire car for a few days when I want the freedom to chase a viewpoint. If that sounds like your kind of trip, it is worth sorting your car hire for the alpine roads in advance, because the good-value cars in mountain towns get snapped up in summer. One more small thing that saves a lot of grief: grab a local eSIM for offline maps before you fly, so you are not hunting for signal halfway up a pass.
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| Option | Best for | Rough cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ÖBB trains | Cities and main valleys | Singles from ~£5 / €6 / $6 | Fast, comfy, cheaper booked early |
| Hire car | Lakes, passes, wine roads | From ~£30 / €35 / $38 a day | Essential for the remote gems |
| Postbus | Trailheads and villages | A few euros (~£4 / €5 / $5) | Reliable but timetables are sparse |
| Regional day pass | A day of local hopping | From ~£9 / €10 / $11 | Good value if you’re making several trips |
Tinker’s Tip: You don’t need a car for the whole trip, and city parking is a pain anyway. Do the cities by train, then pick up a car for just the three or four days you want the high roads and quiet lakes. Best of both, and cheaper.
Where to stay and when to go
For most of these corners you have two sensible options. Either base yourself in a bigger town (Graz for the east, Salzburg for the caves and passes, Klagenfurt for the south) and make day trips, or move slowly and stay out in the small guesthouses and lakeside pensions, which is where the real charm is. Family-run places in the villages are often better value and warmer than the city hotels, and they book up fast in summer. It is worth comparing places to stay near the lakes and passes early, especially if you are travelling in July or August.
As for timing, shoulder season wins almost every time. Late spring gives you the snowmelt waterfalls, the flooded Green Lake, and the passes just opening up, all without the crowds. Early autumn brings warm days, thin queues, and the vineyards turning gold in the Wachau and southern Styria. High summer is glorious for lake swimming but busier and pricier, and deep winter shuts a lot of the high stuff (ice cave and Grossglockner included) while opening the ski towns instead.
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| Season | What it’s like | Good for | Watch out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring | Fresh, green, snowmelt roaring | Green Lake, waterfalls, quiet towns | High passes may still be shut |
| Summer | Warm, lively, everything open | Lake swimming, festivals, hiking | Busiest and priciest |
| Autumn | Golden, calm, mild | Wine country, the Wachau, thin crowds | Some sights wind down late in the season |
| Winter | Snowy, cosy, ski-focused | Bad Gastein spas and slopes | Ice cave and Grossglockner closed |
Money saver: Travelling in the shoulder weeks either side of peak summer can knock a fair chunk off rooms and car hire, and you’ll still catch most of the good weather. If you are watching the pennies, our guide to Austria on a budget has more ways to keep costs down.
Related Article: Want to thread some of these together into one trip? Our Austria road trip guide maps out a proper loop with the timings sorted.
The Takeaway
Austria rewards the traveller who is willing to turn off the main road. The famous spots are famous for good reason, but the country’s real character lives in places like Graz, the faded grandeur of Bad Gastein, the emerald flash of the Green Lake, and a cave so big it feels made up. Pick a corner, give it a few unhurried days, and let the detours do the work.
When you are ready to start pinning down dates and routes, our Austria travel guide pulls the whole country together, and the Austrian castles guide is a good next stop if the fortresses in this list have caught your eye. Go find your own favourite that nobody warned you about. That is the fun bit.
FAQs
What are Austria's best hidden gems away from the crowds?
My top picks are Graz for a city break, the Eisriesenwelt ice cave near Werfen, the wine country of southern Styria, the Wachau Valley for abbeys and wine, and the warm lakes of Carinthia around the Wörthersee. All of them see a fraction of the crowds that Vienna, Salzburg and Hallstatt do.
When is the best time to visit Austria's quieter regions?
Late spring and early autumn are the sweet spot. You get open passes, thinner crowds and softer prices, plus spring snowmelt for the waterfalls and Green Lake, or golden vineyards in autumn. High summer is best only if lake swimming is your priority, since it is the busiest and dearest time.
Do you need a car to reach Austria's hidden gems?
Not for all of them. The cities and main valley towns like Graz, Klagenfurt and Bad Gastein are easy by train. But the remote lakes, the wine roads and the Grossglockner High Alpine Road really need your own wheels, so a mix of trains plus a few days of car hire usually works best.
Is Austria expensive to travel around?
It sits in the middle for Western Europe. Trains are good value (singles from around £5 / €6 / $6), and away from Vienna and the famous villages, food and rooms are noticeably cheaper. Graz and the southern regions in particular give you a lot for your money compared with the big-name spots.
Which is Austria's most underrated city?
Graz, without much doubt. It has a UNESCO-listed old town, the world’s largest historic armoury, a quirky modern art scene and a genuinely good food culture, all for less than you’d pay in Vienna. It also makes a handy base for the wine country to the south.
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Nick Harvey
Hi, I am Nick! Thank you for reading! The Travel Tinker is a resource designed to help you navigate the beauty of travel! Tinkering your plans as you browse!
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