About 278,000 inhabitants live in Austria´s easternmost province, which covers a surface of 3,965 km2. The regional capital is Eisenstadt with 11,000
inhabitants. The Burgenland consists of seven political districts (Eisenstadt
and surroundings, Güssing, Jennersdorf, Mattersburg, Neusiedl am See,
Oberpullendorf and Oberwart) and 167 municipalities.
These are the towns with their own statute Eisenstadt and Rust, 9 towns and 56 market municipalities.
The Burgenland borders on the two Austrian provinces of Lower Austria and Styria in the west, Slovakia in the the northeast, Hungary in the east and Slovenia in
the south.
Covering a relatively narrow strip of land along the Austrian-Hungarian border,
the Burgenland stretches from the Danube in the north to the Slovenian border
in the south. From north to south the Burgenland has an overall length of 166 km.
At Sieggraben, the shortest east-west distance amounts to only 5 km.
The northern Burgenland is characterized by the transition from the foothills
of the Alps, the Leitha and Rosalien mountains, to the Hungarian lowlands with
Lake Neusiedl, Central Europe´s only steppe lake. On the slopes of the Leitha
mountains as well as around Lake Neusiedl, there are large vineyards.
The middle part of the Burgenland is marked by wooded terraces with large
valleys, bordered by the ridges of the Bucklige Welt, the Ödenburg mountains
(606 m) and the Günser mountains with the Geschriebenstein (888 m), the highest
peak of the province. Here you find most of the castles like Deutschkreutz,
Lackenbach, Nikitsch, Landsee, Kobersdorf, Lockenhaus etc.
The southern Burgenland is formed by long ridges followed by large valleys,
which continue as plains towards the east. In the south, the wide Raab valley
opens towards Hungary.
