Attersee

The Attersee is about twenty kilometres long and covers some forty-six square kilometres, which makes it the largest lake entirely within Austria, lying north to south in the Salzkammergut with the Höllengebirge along its eastern side. The water is exceptionally clear - visibility of twenty metres or more is normal - which has made it the main freshwater diving lake in the country, with dive sites along the steep western shore. Gustav Klimt spent fifteen summers here from 1900 and painted most of his landscapes on and around it, a good number of them square-format views of the water and the shore; a small Klimt centre at Kammer and a marked path cover the sites. Sailing is heavy, the wind is reliable, and prehistoric pile dwellings on the lake bed are part of a UNESCO inscription.

History

The lake is first named in 798, as super lacum Aterse, and the Attergau around it in 748, from the Old High German Atara. Pile dwellings of the Neolithic stood on its shores, the oldest find, at Seewalchen, from around 3,900 BC and of the Mondsee group, until the lake rose in the late Copper Age. For centuries timber rafting was a mainstay here, and after the salt works opened at Ebensee in 1604 the southern Attergau turned to cutting firewood for its brine pans (Wikipedia, Attersee - lake).

What's there

• Austria's largest inland lake - twenty kilometres of very clear water.
• Freshwater diving - visibility over twenty metres along the western shore.
• Klimt's landscape ground - fifteen summers of painting, marked by a trail.
• Reliable sailing wind - the reason the lake is thick with boats.

When to go

May to September. A day.

Things to know

The water is clear because it is cold - swimming is bracing all summer. Shore access is broken up by private property in places. Summer weekends fill the villages and lakeside parking.

Nearby

Mondsee and the Wolfgangsee are south-west; Bad Ischl is south.

Key facts