Ossiacher See

The Ossiacher See is the third largest of the Carinthian lakes, about eleven kilometres long in a trough between the Gerlitzen massif to the north and the wooded Ossiacher Tauern to the south, and it warms in summer to temperatures that make it a straightforward swimming lake from June. Ossiach on the southern shore has a Benedictine abbey founded in the eleventh century, later baroque, which is now the base of the Carinthischer Sommer, a classical music festival that has run since 1969 and fills the church and the abbey buildings through July and August. A cycle path runs round the whole lake in about thirty kilometres, boats cross it in summer, and the Kanzelbahn gondola from Annenheim, with the chairlift above it, climbs to the Gerlitzen summit at about nineteen hundred metres for the view over the lake and towards the Julian Alps.

Highlights

• A warm swimming lake - eleven kilometres between the Gerlitzen and the Tauern.
• Ossiach Abbey - the eleventh-century foundation, later rebuilt in baroque.
• The Carinthischer Sommer - the classical festival in the abbey each summer.
• The Gerlitzen lifts - gondola and chairlift from Annenheim to about nineteen hundred metres.

When to go

June to September; July and August for the festival. A day.

What to expect

Much of the shore is taken by hotels, campsites and paid lidos. Summer traffic on the lake road is heavy. Festival dates fill the accommodation around Ossiach.

Nearby

Villach is west; the Wörthersee and Klagenfurt are east.

Key facts