Raiding

Franz Liszt was born in Raiding in 1811, when the village was Doborján in Hungarian Sopron county and his father worked for the Esterházy family; it became Austrian in 1921 with the rest of Burgenland. The house he was born in survives as a museum, a low whitewashed building with a courtyard, restored and rebuilt into a modern display covering his life, his career as a travelling virtuoso, and the wider family. In 2006 a concert hall seating about six hundred was built next to it - a plain rectangular volume set among the vineyards and fields, designed for the acoustic - and it runs a Liszt festival several times a year with international pianists, which brings audiences to a village of a few hundred people.

History

Raiding is first recorded in 1425 as Dobornya, and like the rest of Burgenland it belonged to Hungary from around 900 until 1920-1921, when the treaties after the First World War gave western Hungary to Austria as the new province of Burgenland. Franz Liszt was born here, and the village has been a market town since 1990 (Wikipedia, Raiding, Austria).

What's there

• Liszt's birth house - the low whitewashed building, restored as a museum.
• A concert hall in the fields - the 2006 hall built for its acoustic beside the house.
• A Liszt festival - international pianists playing in the village several times a year.
• A border-changed village - Hungarian Doborján until 1921.

When to go

April to October; check the festival calendar. Half a day.

Things to know

The village is tiny with almost no services - eat elsewhere. The museum is small. Concerts sell out and accommodation nearby is limited; most audiences drive in and out.

Nearby

Lockenhaus and Stadtschlaining are west; Eisenstadt is north.

Key facts