Bad Ischl: The Salzkammergut's secret capital
Bad Ischl is an imperial city, spa town and in 2024, it will be the focal point of the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024. The symbiosis of architecture, culture and tradition reflect the history and artistic diversity of the town - pointing the way into the future. Bad Ischl’s beauty and relaxing effect has been appreciated by holiday makers for centuries – spearheaded by Emperor Franz Franz Joseph.
Architecture in Bad Ischl
Bad Ischl’s architecture is a mix of historic buildings, traditional Alpine architecture, and influences from various eras. The city by the river Traun is also considered the birthplace of the "Sommerfrische," a summer holiday that takes you out of the city to enjoy the cooler climate of the mountains. The trend was started when Emperor Franz Joseph I. and Empress Sisi went there on holiday and were copied first by members of the aristocracy, then industrial magnates and finally the bourgeoisie.
Hotels, coffee houses, casinos, and promenades were built to be the new playground for Austria’s high society and onlookers from all over Europe. Many artists, such as Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms and Franz Lehár, discovered the magic of a summer holiday in the countryside as well. These holiday makers built fantastic villas for themselves and it is these buildings that dominate the face of the town to this day.
Architectural Highlights
Event Highlights during the European Capital of Culture Year 2024 in Bad Ischl
Summer Holidays in the Salzkammergut
Were did it all start?
With the emperor, of course. His parents had remained childless for a long time until they travelled to Bad Ischl to bathe in the healing saline waters. Soon after, Franz Joseph was born. This basically made him a son of Bad Ischl and he spent 83 out of his 86 summers there.
Of course, an emperor never travelled alone. The longer Franz Joseph reigned, the larger the entourage became that accompanied him on his summer holiday. At some point, seemingly half of Vienna relocated to Bad Ischl for the summer months. “In Ischl, I always feel as though the surrounding mountains are some kind of decoration that someone draped around Vienna’s Ringstrasse Boulevard,” said satirist Karl Kraus. By then, the small Bad Ischl had turned into an imperial spa town.
The emperor seems to have loved Bad Ischl mostly because of the surrounding nature. He used to leave town in the early morning to roam the surrounding mountains and enjoy the hours when he was - finally - free from any obligations.
The fact that there are over 1000 hunting trophies mounted on the walls of the imperial villa has probably less to do with the thrill of the hunt than the opportunity for freedom which every single hunting expedition provided.
The Imperial Villa (Kaiservilla) in Bad Ischl is so large that in many other places, it might be called a palace. The furniture is surprisingly comfortable and one gets the impression the villa’s inhabitants just left for a daytrip that morning and will be back in the evening. Even the desk in the study seems as if someone had just left it for a brief break. This is where the emperor wrote the manifesto „An meine Völker!“, to declare the war on Serbia which ended in a catastrophe for Europe.