Eggenburg

Eggenburg kept its walls: about two and a half kilometres of medieval enceinte with some twenty towers still standing round the old town, which is unusual in Lower Austria where most were quarried away in the nineteenth century. Inside is a long market square with the Gemaltes Haus, the painted house, covered in sgraffito of 1547 - biblical and allegorical scenes scratched through plaster layers across the whole façade. The parish church has twin towers and a charnel house. Two museums sit in the town: the Krahuletz Museum, built round the collection of a nineteenth-century geologist and prehistorian who worked the local sites, and a motorcycle museum. The stone quarried around Eggenburg supplied Viennese building for centuries.

What you actually see

• A near-complete town wall - two and a half kilometres with some twenty towers.
• The Gemaltes Haus - sgraffito of 1547 covering a whole façade on the square.
• The Krahuletz Museum - geology and prehistory from a nineteenth-century collector.
• A long market square - the medieval town plan largely intact inside the walls.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The town is small and quiet - half a day covers it. Museums close on Mondays and reduce hours in winter. Rail connections from Vienna involve a change and are slow.

Nearby

Horn and Altenburg Abbey are north; the Kamptal is south.